Going to invite you to open your Bibles to Numbers chapter 21
today. If you're joining us in
Cambridge or in Kitchener online today.
So glad to have you here. And I want to start by asking
this question. What would you list in your top
five books of the Bible? You just listen your favorites.
What make your top five favorite books of the Bible?
I want you to think about that. Some of you are like, there are
books. That's OK.
If that's you, you're here today.
You've never walked in church before me and I am more than
excited that you are here. You don't have to answer this
one, but for those who've been around in church for a while,
what would you put in there? The Bible is made-up of 66
books. 39 of those books are found in the Old Testament, 27
in the New Testament. And I think there's some that
most people would kind of land in.
I, I could probably nail down at least a few of the books that
are probably in most people's top five because there's
definitely some that are more known and more popular than
others, right? So usually if you ask this
question, we will, we will put some gospels in, maybe one or
two gospels. So gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
John, you should all have Luke in there by now.
Just Mark that in Psalms, right? I know a lot of people just say
I love the Psalms. I just love the way that they
just reflect my emotions, my heart to God.
Some of you, you love the Proverbs, you love the wisdom
books, then the idea of just going and finding wisdom from
the Lord. Some of you and you're probably
maybe maybe you're more like sci-fi fantasy people in your
reading habits. You like Revelation and the
second-half of Daniel. That's where you land.
Maybe you're a former emo kid. So you love Ecclesiastes and
Job. That's your jam, man.
What are your top five favorites?
I bet you if I asked any of you as you came in the door this
morning, none of you would have listed Numbers in the top five.
No one was walking in like Numbers is my book.
I cannot wait for the fact that you were going to preach on
Numbers this morning. If you don't know what Numbers
is, Numbers is the 4th book in the Bible.
Here's how you know numbers. Numbers is the book where if
people actually make it through Leviticus, starting at beginning
to read the book the Bible from the beginning to end.
Numbers is the point where if they made it through Leviticus,
they're definitely out. They're done.
Like I OK, I I did Genesis in Exodus.
That was pretty cool and interesting.
Lots of great stories. I suffered through Leviticus and
now I'm starting in a book that's filled with a census.
I'm not, I'm just, I need to find something else to read.
And numbers got its name because it actually has two censuses in
it, one at the very beginning and one near the end.
And so like, if you're not into censuses, this is probably not
the book that you have immediately gravitated to.
But I think the Hebrew name for the the book of numbers is
actually makes it a book that you might be much more
interested in reading. So the Hebrew name for the book
of Numbers is BA Mead bar, which means either in the wilderness
or in the desert, in the wilderness or in the desert.
And that is a way better title, the Numbers, if you want to get
people interested, because unless you're an accountant or
you're like a numbers nerd like me, you like like fantasy sports
and statistics and poles and trend lines and graphs, most
people aren't excited by numbers.
But also it's a much better term because that's what this book is
actually all about. It's about being in the
wilderness. It's about being in the desert.
And so if you look, Genesis is the book of beginnings, Exodus
is the story of the salvation and exit out of God's people.
Leviticus, they begin to get some of the details of the law.
But then you come to Numbers and it's about this period of time
where the people have come out of slavery and they're headed
towards the promised land, but they haven't got there yet and
they're wandering in the wilderness.
And so the Hebrew name just makes way more sense of what is
going on in this book and actually makes it way more
interested because you may not be a numbers person, but sooner
or later everybody is a wilderness or desert person.
Sooner or later everyone is a wilderness or desert person
because every one of us sooner or later finds ourselves in
spots where we're in the wilderness or the desert.
Here. Here's what I mean.
We will, or we are all going through periods of time where
we're wandering. We we are, or we will go through
times where we know what it feels like to feel like we're
lost, to feel like we're stuck. To feel like we're going in
circles, To feel discontented, to feel impatient, To feel like
we're suffering, like we're desperate.
Those are wilderness times. That's what it's like to be in
the wilderness. And if you're there or you've
been there, then you know that this, that's a wilderness time.
That's a desert time. And today I want to look at a
story from In the Wilderness that that really it has nothing
to do with numbers, but a lot to do with those types of feelings.
It has a lot to do with the people who have found themselves
in a spot they didn't expect to be in.
And they start to get frustrated and they start to get impatient
and they start to get discontent and they feel like God has
dropped the ball. And that's probably something
that if you don't resonate with that now, at some point you're
going to be in that spot. And also it has snakes.
So that's exciting. We're actually going to then see
how all of this story, this, this weird wild wilderness snake
story ultimately has to do with Jesus.
So let me just pray for us and then we'll jump into our
scripture for today. Father, thank you for your word.
Thank you that all of your word is beneficial.
It's helpful. It's good for us to grow us up,
to train us in righteousness, to help us see You more clearly, to
help us see ourselves in our blind spots and weaknesses more
clearly, to help us know what it means to walk in light of your
grace more clearly. Father, I pray as we go through
this story that You would help us if we've seen the story, if
we know the story, if we're familiar with it, to see it with
fresh eyes, and for all of us to see Jesus in the story and to
see where we relate to Jesus in the story.
I pray this in Jesus holy name, Amen.
All right, let's read this together.
Numbers chapter 21, verses 4 through 9.
Then they sent out from Mount Hore by the way of the Red Sea
to bypass the land of Edom. But the people became impatient
because of the journey. The people spoke against God and
Moses. Why have you LED us from Egypt
to die in the wilderness? Sounds like my kids in the back
of the car. There is no bread or water, and
we detest this wretched food. Then the Lord sent poisonous
snakes among the people, and they bit them so that many
Israelites died. Then the people came to Moses
and said, We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and
against you. Intercede with the Lord so that
he will take the snakes away from us.
And Moses interceded for the people.
Then the Lord said to Moses, make a snake image and mount it
on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks
at it, he will recover. So Moses made a bronze snake and
mounted it on a pole. Whenever someone was bitten and
he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered.
May God bless the reading of his word.
So I want to start off right off the bat by just saying I can
identify with the Israelites in this story because I know that I
can struggle with impatience and I especially struggle with
impatience when I'm traveling. I like to travel, don't get me
wrong, and I don't mind a long journey.
I do mind interruptions or delays on that journey.
So we could go on Saturday, I made an 18 hour drive and it was
beautiful because I usually make that drive in about 20 hours.
That's what made it beautiful. There was no delays.
It was a perfect drive. We went from Ormond Beach down
in Florida. We left at 5:00 AM in the
morning and by 11 PMI was walking in the door of my house,
ready to sleep in my own bed. And it was a good day.
But if that 18 hour trip had somehow taken 36 hours, it would
have been a very, very, very bad day.
Especially for my family who were in the car with me.
I mean that I don't have a lot of patience for detours, for
delays. And these guys are going through
a delay because they set out for Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea.
But they went about it in a way that was going to take a lot
longer than the quickest way. And I don't like taking long
routes. I don't know about you.
Maybe you love the scenic route. I like the scenic route if the
scenic route is my plan. But I'm not a fan of the scenic
route when I get detoured. But the people became impatient
because of this journey. They were on a journey.
In fact, at this point they're on a 40 year journey that is
taken away longer than anyone wanted.
Like you and I, we've probably, you maybe been on long trips.
I've been on long trips. I've never been on a trip where
I started the trip and then like by the time I finished the trip,
all the other people that started on the trip with me were
dead and I was with a whole new group of people.
That's this trip. If you can relate to the idea of
feeling like you're in the middle of something that is
taking way too long, that is just dragging on, that's where
these guys are. Maybe maybe you're in a season
of life where it it's a wilderness time.
You, you feel like you're just wandering now.
You're you're in a spot in your life or you're like, I thought
by now I wouldn't be living in my parents basement.
I would be owning a home. I thought by now I would make
enough money to pay the bills. I thought by now it wouldn't be
just me that, that, that I'd have a partner to do this with,
that I'd be married by now. Maybe you're in a spot where
you're like, I really thought by now they would have moved past
this, Thought my kids would have moved beyond this.
I thought my spouse would have grown past that.
Even more frequently, if we're honest, we look in the mirror,
we have times where we thought. I thought by now I would have
moved past this. I would have grown up a little
bit more. I wouldn't keep on falling into
the same things. Or maybe you're in a spot where
you're in the waiting for a medical treatment.
Maybe you're in the spot where, again, you're just in this
season. It just feels like spiritual
stuckness, these wilderness, these waiting times, man, it's
easy to get impatient and frustrated in them.
And this is what happens when these people, and often times
when we get impatient in our frustration, in our stuckness,
in our wilderness times, it says the people spoke against God and
Moses. Why have you let us up from
Egypt to die in the wilderness? There's no bread or water.
We detest this wretched food. See, when we're in these
wilderness seas, one of the dangers that we can run into is
the wilderness seasons can cause us to distort reality.
They they put us into deep seasons of nostalgia.
Nostalgia is a reality distortion field.
We all find ourselves in moments because of where we are in the
present that we look to the past and we miss the good old days,
right? And I, I, I, I know at times I'm
there as a parent and, and I'm, I'm parenting teens that are now
growing into young adults. And if your parents there in
that same spot, you know that sometimes you can fall into the
trap of thinking, man was so good when they were small and I
knew where they were all the time and, and, and I could be in
control of some of you are groaning because you're like
you, you forget. I know I'm going to talk about
that. Married people, right?
You're like, man, sure was a lot easier when I was single.
Working people who are like, if I could just go back to the good
old days of college, university. Sometimes some of us, it's like
high school retired people then who are like, no, no, no, I miss
work. I miss going.
I miss having a schedule in my day and we won't even get
started on church nostalgia. The thing is, if we're really
honest, the past we long for is almost always a past that never
actually existed. So when when, when you're in
that spot where you wish your kids were younger.
It's never the part where you wish your kids were younger and
you were constantly exhausted because your kids didn't sleep
through the night and whenever you were riding in a car, Bluey
was blaring right. That's never the you're never
missing that you've forgotten all about that or you've blocked
it out of your mind intentionally.
A married person who is frustrated in their marriage and
thinks, man, this would be so much easier when it was single,
never thinks about all the parts of being single that they
despised and hated. The the feeling of being alone
and not having somebody else there and then having to go on
terrible dates. You know, they don't think about
that. No one who misses high school
thinks I would like to get back to the acne and insecurity,
please. Right.
That's not the part that you're thinking about in, in in church.
World Church could not have been that good for 60 years.
We've been in decline. There may have been a whole
bunch of things that you enjoyed, but we've been in
steady decline for 60 years and fulfilling our mission in the
country of Canada. So it wasn't that good.
The Israelites, they missed a version of Egypt that never was.
They missed Five Star Resort Egypt, right?
Somehow in their minds, after 40 years of desert, Egypt looks so
good. But it was a place of slavery
and bondage and oppression. But in their head, all they can
think about is but they we had lots of bread and different
fruits. The season you're in right now,
yes, it, it's less than ideal. It may be incredibly tough, but
I just want to let you know out of the chute, the past you
remember wasn't as good as you remember it.
And when when untruthful nostalgia begins to kick in, it
can pour rocket fuel on a couple other dangers that begin to take
root in the hearts of people. We're going to see that here
because it's not just that wilderness seasons can distort
reality, but when that reality gets a distorted wilderness
seasons can cause us to begin to doubt God, right?
It wasn't a problem that the Israelites were feeling a
certain way. I need us to understand that God
is not offended by your feelings in tough times.
He gets it and He understands, and He would likely agree with
you when things are hard and His heart off often breaks at the
difficulties that we find ourselves in.
It was true that the wilderness was hot.
It is absolutely true that there wasn't a lack of water in the
wilderness, that there wasn't a lot of variety to eat in the
wilderness. It I, I can't imagine I
traveling with the I just got back from traveling with 11
people who I love dearly, But traveling with 11 people can be
frustrating. Traveling with two to 3 million
people, absolutely. These guys are frustrated.
I have no question about that. The problem was that they
allowed a difficult situation to cause them to to doubt, to
distrust, and ultimately to blame God.
It's when we move from our our feelings about things to
accusations against God where we run into problems.
It says the people spoke against God and Moses.
They they went from feeling like man, this is less than ideal to
God this is your fault. You did this actually you and
your boy Moses, this is all on you.
You gave us bad directions. You, you, you put us in this
situation. What type of God would cause us
to wander around here for 40 years with limited food and
water in the heat? Like, what type of God are you?
God, we would have been way better off just staying put
where we were and never listening to you.
Following you just got us into all sorts of problems.
In fact, if we're really honest, slavery in Egypt was so much
better than life with you in the wilderness.
You ever found yourself in a situation where your heart
begins to get into that space? God, I don't get how could you
do this to me? God, life was so much easier.
In fact, maybe it was Even so much better without Jesus.
God, I, I, I know you told me to do this, I did this.
And now I'm pretty sure you have no idea what you're doing
because look how all of this is turning out for me.
And if we aren't careful in the wilderness, it can become a
breeding ground for doubt and for distrust, and ultimately for
blame against God. Closely tied to that wilderness,
seasons can cause us to forget God's goodness.
In fact, he can even cause us to disdain God's grace.
So there's a couple things I want you to see here.
One, this is not the first time the people of Israel have fallen
into complaint and grumbling against God.
This is actually the last of seven times in in the book of
Numbers where the people just start blaming God and thinking
about how good it was back in the old days.
In fact, the in the immediate context of of this particular
story, God has just shown up for them again in a miraculous way,
defeated their enemies. Verses 1 to 3 is a story of God
doing work and defeating enemies they couldn't defeat on their
own. And then 4 is but it's so long,
you're taking us the wrong way. We're so hungry and so thirsty
we wish we'd never left. And we can quickly say, man, how
ungrateful. How could they forget so quick?
How could they go from verses one to three to complaining
again in verse 4? I don't know about you, but
there's been a lot of times where I've moved from verse 3 to
verse 4 in my life where a week ago God does something great.
Sometimes a day ago God does something great, but the next
day something isn't going my way and I'm quickly back to
complaining. Because that's what we do.
We forget what God has done for us and we focus on what we think
he should do for us, right? What what you did for us
yesterday is old news, God, Let's get to the new stuff.
And I'll just say this. If that is a consistent reality
and posture in your heart, it's likely because you want
something from God that is more than God you.
What you most deeply desire is not God Himself, it's God to do
things for you. You don't recognize God Himself
as the greatest gift, but you are looking to His gifts as the
greatest thing in your life. And if that's the case, if it's
always about the next thing and the next thing and the next
thing and God doing another thing for you, you'll always end
up dissatisfied. You'll always end up grumbling.
You'll always end up complaining because God is not enough for
you. You want his gifts more than you
want him. Here's, here's a great example
here in in this passage, they, they talk about the wretched
food. God, we, we don't get enough to
eat and we don't get enough to drink.
All we get is this wretched food.
You know what they're talking about, the wretched food.
You know what that is? It's manna from heaven.
That's the wretched food. It is the thing that God has
provided for them that allows up to 3 million people be sustained
in the desert without all dying. It is, it is a miracle.
Every day in the morning they wake up and God has provided the
food that is necessary for this whole crowd of people straight
from his hands. And they're like boring.
We want something else. And they've actually already
gone. If you go back to one of their
complaints, God got fed up with them.
He gave them, so he gave them quail.
It says he gave them so much quail.
I'm going to give you so much quail.
You're going to be so sick of you puke it out your nose.
Go read. If you're a junior high student,
you'll love it. Go read it.
That was the Numbers 11. You can go read that one.
But how many things, how many times do we receive grace from
God? God does something for us.
He answers a prayer. He's so good.
And so kind of the fact that we wake up in the morning is a gift
of God's grace and we're like, well, could you do something
else? Because this is getting a little
old, I could use a little more grace in my life.
Here's a spiritual example. We've been talking about how
this is all about Jesus, right? This is all about Jesus.
John 647 to 48. Jesus says that he's manna.
He's the bread of life. He's the bread, he says, that
came down from heaven. He's referring right back to
this reality in the wilderness. He ties this into communion to
the Eucharist, depending on your tradition, which literally means
giving thanks that at all times, in all places, God's people
ought to be thankful because of the things that we sang about
this morning. The God sent his Son to die for
us, and there is nothing more that he could give us that is
greater or better than that by his body, his blood, that Jesus
would do that. That's the gospel.
That is the heart of the heart of the gospel of the good news.
And without fail, I constantly and sometimes am a Christian who
can get tired of the gospel. Sometimes it's even phrased to
me this way as a pastor. When are we going to move beyond
the milk and get to the meat? Now, if someone comes to me and
what they mean by that, when are we going to talk about repenting
of sin and following Jesus fully surrendered?
Then I'm all in for that, if that's what you mean.
Yeah, let's keep on moving towards that fully in all
things. That's what meat is.
Jesus says his bread is to do the will of the Father.
So if you're like, hey, help me grow and being fully surrendered
to Jesus in all areas, it's absolutely what we want to do as
a church. If you mean when are we going to
stop talking about the gospel so much?
When are we going to move past the doctrines of grace?
Like, I get it. I get it.
I get Jesus died on the cross. He rose again.
Could we get to something more interesting?
Why we have to talk about the gospel every week?
I want to learn obscure Bible facts.
When are you going to give me more obscure Bible facts?
Well, I'll try and give you some of those too.
I want to go down the rabbit hole on biblical prophecy.
That's not meat, by the way. Scripture never talks about that
as meat. Meat is the gospel.
The gospel is the full meal. It is the full meal.
It is how we come to faith and how we grow in faith.
If what you mean is when are you going to tell me all the things
that I have to do in a list that's actually milk, that's not
meat, that's you needing somebody to feed you all the
time. That's what babies need.
Meat is like I so get the gospel and the Holy Spirit and my heart
is so surrounded to the Holy Spirit that I think the
everything through the lens of the gospel.
I'm allowing the gospel to transform every area of my life
and the area of how I deal with people and forgive people.
I look to the truth that Christ has so forgiven me and I just
know. I don't even need you to tell
me, pastor. I know it because that truth of
the gospel is so present to me when I struggle with am I loved,
am I accepted and I struggle with insecurity.
The gospel tells me, man, I'm so loved and so secure because of
what Jesus did for me on the cross and because I am one with
Christ in the Father's eyes. You, when you get that, that's
when you got meat. And when we get bored with the
gospel, we want to move on from the cross in the empty tomb.
When we have fully understood the gospel and are fully living
out its implications, then we'll be fully mature.
If you're a Christian, you should never tire.
You should never get bored of the bread of Heaven come down,
should never grow past the gospel, should never grow
ungrateful for the provision of spiritual man and God's grace.
That is just new for us every single morning and every single
time we fail to measure up because Christ's death on the
cross is sufficient for all of our sins.
It is amazing to me how people who are filled with gratitude
and are overwhelmed with the sense of what God has done for
them in Jesus Christ and and have grown and and put deep
roots down. None of us are perfect in this,
none of us. But the more it happens, the
more steady they get, the more even when they're in the
wilderness, they never seem like they're in the wilderness
because of their heart is so full of gratitude, because they
full so fully and more fully understand the grace of God
through the gospel. Be careful.
The wilderness can cause us to doubt God.
It can cause us to even become ungrateful or want to move on
from his incredible goodness and grace towards us.
And just a reminder, like Pastor Kirk said last week, sin at its
core is not simply about what we do, but why we do what we do.
It's it's not just about the acts, it's about the posture and
the motives of our heart that drive the act right.
The failure to trust God, the failure to listen to God, the
failure to acknowledge God alone as God.
And like Pastor Kirk talked about last week, sin has
consequences. That's what we see here in verse
6. The Lord sent poisonous snakes
among them, among the people, and they bit them so that many
Israelites died. See, when you distrust God, when
you disdain His grace and his gifts, you put yourself in
danger. Last week a serpent convinced
Adam and Eve to sin and that led them to death.
This week, God uses serpents and snakes to punish people sin,
which also leads to the death of many.
It is a reminder that sin has consequences and we all sin.
Pastor Kirk talked about that last week too.
And I'm telling you this out of love.
We are all sinners in and of ourselves.
Some of you here right now, your frustration in your situation is
driving you towards distrust of God and disdain for His grace,
and it is putting you in danger. You have lost your appreciation.
You have lost your awe at the goodness and grace of God.
You just don't feel it anymore. We sing the songs, you go
through the motions, but you're just like, yeah, whatever.
God, get on to the thing that I actually want you.
You're not answering my prayer. You're not doing the thing for
me. And so all the rest of it is
just noise. And if that's where you are,
that's where you are today. And you know it.
Your heart, ultimately, even as we sing songs of God's grace and
mercy and forgiveness and tremendous sacrifice, your heart
is still full of complaint and murmuring and grumbling and
hardness. It's grown cold towards God.
The question for us when we're in that spot is, is there
anything that can be done? The good news of this story is
there is verse 7. Then the people came to Moses
and said, we have sinned by speaking against the Lord and
against you. Intercede with the Lord so that
he will take the snakes away from us.
And Moses interceded for the people.
And so I would say to you, if you are in a spot where doubt
and disdain have taken root in your heart, call out to God and
repent of those realities. Repent of that sin.
And and unlike the Israelites, you don't have to go to anybody
else. You can go directly through
Jesus who intercedes on our behalf.
You can go to him and say, God, I'm sorry for blaming you.
I'm sorry that you haven't been enough for me.
I'm sorry for thinking my plans and my ideas and my priorities
are better than yours. I'm sorry that I've been taking
your grace for granted and all that I have seen and what has
been omnipresent in front of me is what I want from you.
Sorry for growing impatient with you in the midst of the
wilderness. Now, if you've been around
church, and probably even if you haven't, this part maybe all
makes sense to you. But we're going to get to the
part of the story that's a little confusing unless we
insert Jesus into it, because the last part of this story
reads this way. The Lord said to Moses, make a
snake image and mount it on a pole.
When anyone who has bitten looks at it, he will recover.
And so Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole.
And whenever someone was bitten and he looked at the bronze
snake, he recovered. What's going on here?
Well, this is where Jesus says he really fits into the story.
In John 314 to 15, Jesus is sitting down with a guy by the
name of Nicodemus who is a religious teacher, a Jewish
religious teacher of the day, and he's having a long
conversation with Nicodemus. And within this conversation, in
verse 3, verse 14, he says just as Moses lifted up the snake in
the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that
everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
And ultimately Jesus is saying this healing from sin doesn't
come from anything that we do, but it comes from what God does.
Just like the people didn't do anything, they simply trusted
God and took him at his word and looked to the bronze snake.
Jesus saying that the same is true with me.
In fact, I'm the ultimate fulfilment of this, that if you
really want to receive healing and wholeness, not just a one
time shot, but for always it's found through faith.
And that faith is in me. I'm the fulfillment of what
Moses was pointing towards way back in the desert.
That snake was a one time offer for that moment.
But I cover it all. See, back then the only way that
the Israelites could be healed was to believe God and take him
at His Word. God's solution was not for them
to do a bunch of acts of contrition, go through a lot of
religious motions. Now he just said here's my
solution, trust me. And those who trusted recovered
just like God said they would. That didn't mean there wasn't
any pain involved in the snake bite originally, but they
recovered. God was faithful to his word.
In John 3. Jesus is saying that's me, that
I have come to fix the consequences of sin, not just
for a moment, but for forever, and Jesus can save us from any
sin, and anyone can be saved from sin by Jesus.
See the next words in that section in John chapter 3.
John chapter 314. John chapter 315 means that the
next verse is John 316. Probably the most famous verse
in all of scripture is directly related to this story.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so
that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have
eternal life. Every one of us has a snake
problem. It started in the garden.
It's led to death for all of us. All of us have a sin problem.
All of us have a death problem. We've all been poisoned by the
serpent and with God's, without God's intervention, we are all
toast. There's nothing we can do for
ourselves. But thanks be to God, he
intervenes. He saw us in our desperate
straits, He saw us in our sin problem, He saw us in our death
problem, and He sent Jesus to die for us so we wouldn't have
to die forever. Just like the snake gets lifted
up on a pole, Jesus gets lifted up on a cross.
That's what we're going to celebrate on Friday.
Just like the people needed to believe God and take Him at His
word, that that snake on a pole would lead to their healing, we
need to believe God and take him at His word that when Christ
died, He died for our sins. That our sins were nailed to the
cross with Christ and we can receive healing through Jesus
Christ. And just like those who looked
at the serpent lived, those who believe Jesus truly live forever
and all time. The snake represented what was
killing the people. And when Jesus went to his death
on the cross, Jesus became what's killing us. 2nd
Corinthians 521 the apostle Paul put it this way.
He became sin. Who knew no sin that we might
become the righteousness of God. That's why we celebrate Easter.
That's why God's grace is so amazing, because we were all
dead and Christ died so that we could be alive.
If that's your story, then your story is the Easter story.
Then your story was foreshadowed in this story that we're talking
about today. That's why that story is our
story, because Jesus makes it true and Jesus makes it whole.
And if you have never come to a point where you have trusted in
Jesus and Jesus alone to pay the penalty for your sin to make you
whole and heal you, then the good news is that you can do it
today. And he does it.
If you look to the cross and believe in Jesus, you are made
whole. There's nothing else you need to
do. Turn to Him.
But the story of Numbers isn't just a story about Jesus on the
cross. For people who haven't known
Jesus on the cross like we've been walking through, the story
of numbers is a story of people in the wilderness, people who
God had showed his grace to, who already were his people.
People he had called out of slavery and was leading to the
promised land. The people who he continued
leading to the promised land even though they messed up again
and again and again and again. And some of you here today, you
belong to Jesus. Your sins have been forgiven
because of your faith in Jesus. So you came to that point.
But maybe you're in a season of wilderness and desert in your
life today. Maybe it's because of a sense of
nostalgia, even for the sin and the slavery that Jesus rescued
you out of through his death. You haven't been walking in
trust. You haven't been walking in the
surrender. You haven't been walking in
gratitude. Some of you right now, in this
moment, I don't have to say the thing because the Holy Spirit is
telling you right now what The thing is.
It's telling you the snake that's biting you, that's
putting you in pain. I want you to know Jesus doesn't
punish his children, but he does discipline his children.
He disciplines his children for their good to call them back to
healing and to wholeness. I want to invite you, if your
heart's grown cold, if you're in a spot where you're in the
wilderness and and the wilderness is leading you to
doubt God, to disdain his grace, to blame him, cry out to Jesus,
look to him afresh and a new see his grace again through new
eyes. Would this Easter season be a
season where man, Pastor Kirk and I have been praying this?
That we would see the grace of God like we've never seen it
before in even more powerful ways than you saw when you first
came to Jesus. That that your heart would be
set on fire again by the goodness and the grandness of
God's grace. You would just have a heart full
of gratitude and surrender to a God who loves you so much as you
look at the cross and you look at the empty tomb.
It's so easy to grow impatient when we travel and we journey
towards the true and ultimate promised land of a new heaven
and new earth. As we walk through this time,
we've come to Christ, but we're still on the road to where He's
taken us, and we get frustrated. We frustrate ourselves, people
frustrate us. Circumstances frustrate us.
It feels like a big detour. And it gets so easy to forget
just how good God was and taking us out of our slavery.
To forget just how big the price was that was paid to rescue us.
To develop feelings of entitlement with the gifts of
God and boredom with the grace and gospel of God.
I mean, it's hard living in the wilderness, but keep your eyes
fixed on Jesus and he'll see you through.
And when you fail, and you will many times, when your heart
grows cold, and it will, when you're tempted to blame God, and
you will be call out to Him anew, fix your eyes on Jesus
anew and allow him to refresh you again with the manna from
heaven. Let's pray, God help us to see
the wonder of Your grace. Help us this Easter season to
see the wonder of God made flesh, the perfect Son of God,
sinless, spotless Lamb of God, as we'll talk about on Friday,
nailed to the cross simply and solely out of your incredible
grace, out of your love for us, out of your pursuit of us.
Help us to see again how great your miracles and your mercies
are. Help us never to get cold in our
hearts about the idea that we have resurrected people if we
have trusted in Jesus. We were dead and now we're
alive. You did that for us and You paid
such a price to do it for us. God, if there's anyone here
today who is yet to fix their eyes on Jesus, who is yet to
understand that Jesus and Jesus alone is the only solution for
the problem of sin in their life, for the problem of death
and destruction, I pray today the scales would fall off their
eyes and they would see that grace for the first time in a
way that would just overwhelm them.
By the power of Your Spirit, put us in tears because you've been
so good to us. May we be a people who are
marked by a deep sense of awe, a deep sense of gratitude at the
Jesus who fulfills all of Scripture, who fulfills the
deepest needs of our soul to be made right with you.
And it's in his name we pray. Amen.