Numbers 14:40-45
To Fear or Follow
Woodlawn Baptist Church
November 25, 2007
James said that “life is like a vapor. It’s here today and gone tomorrow. It appears for just a brief time, and then it’s gone.” The psalmist said that life is like grass. It rises in the morning, grows tall in the afternoon, only to be cut down in the evening. Job said that life is brief, like the swift flight of an eagle, swooping down after its prey. They were all right, weren’t they? Life is definitely short.
I turned 38 in August, and in some ways life has seemed to have run slowly. There are times when I feel like I’ve been around for a long, long time. But for the most part it has flown by. High school seems like a few months ago; my wedding day doesn’t feel like 17 years ago. My children definitely should not be so old. But it’s more than that. There are things I had hoped to have accomplished by now, milestones I had hoped would be behind me rather than still out ahead. I thought life would have looked differently than it does today.
One Sunday night in October Kathy came up to me before services and told me a girl I had dated in high school had died. After services we got online and found the obituary. There it was, in black and white, my old girlfriend, just a couple of weeks younger than me, dead, gone. “Grown up in a moment, cut down in the evening.” It was a weird feeling. I’m around death quite a lot, but this one was different. Not so much because she was an old girlfriend, but because death had knocked close to home. I literally spent two days staring at that obituary, praying and thinking about the days God gives us, and He was speaking loud and clear: Life is short Kevin; make every day count.
Some of you have been reading through Matthew this week. Maybe others of you are reading the gospels too. As I read them I read about the remarkable life of Jesus Christ: how a young man moved from obscurity to world renown in a little over three years. I read about the lives He touched, about the lives that were changed, about the people He influenced, and about the relationships He inspired. His life was shorter than mine, yet He changed the world without the use of books, magazines, radio, television or internet. The life that was formed in a carpenter’s shop ended abruptly on a cross, yet Jesus made every day count.
You want every day to count too, don’t you? You want your days with your husband or your wife or your kids and grandkids to count. You want those days to mean something. Every man in this room wants to know that the days he spent on this earth were about more than pecking away at a piece of wood or pushing a pencil. You want to know that your time here meant something. We want to know that we’ve left our mark. When I talk to one electrical contractor, he doesn’t tell me about pulling wires or bending conduit. He tells me about the well-known buildings his wire is in.
But it’s more than that. In every human being there is a need that’s been hard-wired into us that drives us to desire significance and value. Look at the television line-up from last year and this year. Heroes was one of the most popular shows of the year – about normal people with extraordinary abilities who go around doing great things. This year the bionic woman is back, then there’s Chuck, the everyday nerd who gets all the governments top secrets downloaded to his brain. Now he’s got to be responsible for those secrets. What about Journeyman, the writer who finds himself able to travel back in time to do good things for people?
All these stories are about normal people like you and me; people with an innate desire to do something of worth, of value, to leave their mark. If you’re not careful, you’ll suppress that God-given desire until you grow content to take a paycheck and wait for glory. But I suspect that most of you still live with that desire. I see it in moms who invest hours in the lives of their kids. They lecture and fuss over manners and posture and tips on dating. Parents attending ball games and banquets, trying to form responsible little men and women. I see it in church members who give hours of their days, or days of their lives pouring over Bible studies, praying over empty chairs, diligently teaching or training others to live for God.
Can I get you to do a little mental exercise with me? Think back over the last week. Were there conversations you wish you’d have had? Relationships you wish you had nurtured? Prayers you wish you had prayed? Was there something of significance you wish you had done? Or done differently? Think back over the past month, or even better, as 2007 draws near its end, did it go the way you had hoped? Can you believe that after today there are only 5 Sundays left?
Did 2007 go like you hoped it would? Did your marriage grow the way you secretly hoped it would? Are you still in that relationship you thought would end? Did you save the money you wanted to save? Did you take the trip you’d been dreaming of taking? Did you form that friendship you thought you’d form? Did you keep the commitments you made to God? Maybe you promised God one Sunday you were going to pray more, read your Bible more, share your faith more, live for His glory more. Was there a giant in your life you planned to slay? You were going to give up smoking, but you didn’t. You were going to stop watching so much TV, but you haven’t. You were going to start spending more time with your family, but it didn’t happen.
Has this year been one of the slowest of your life? Or did it race by for you too? Do you know what I’ve learned in all this? This is really profound, so listen up: life is short! We’ve got to make every day count! Do you want to know how to do that? I hope so, because today I want to remind you of something from God’s Word that I believe will help, and I say remind rather than teach because it’s something you really already know.
I’ve been showing you for a few weeks now how God led Israel right up to the front door of Canaan, the Promised Land, and told Moses and the people all the while that He was giving them this fantastic place of wonders. Of course we already saw that after hearing the reports from the men who went in to spy out the land, the people of Israel disobeyed God by refusing to go. They gave in to their fears and refused God’s command, and we learned that God never intended His people to live or operate out of fear. Instead, He blesses faith; not the kind of faith that hides inside of church and says it believes, but the kind of faith that causes a man or woman to follow God’s leadership in spite of fear. God blessed Caleb because he wholly followed God.
I want to direct your attention to a few verses in Numbers 14 again today. In that chapter, because of their disobedience, God tells the people that all of them who were 20 years old and older were going to die in the wilderness. They would wander around for 40 years, a year for every day they spied out the land and witnessed its bounty. And for 40 years they would live with the knowledge that their carcasses would fall there, never really knowing the great blessings of God. The people’s disobedience was so offensive to God that verse 36 tells us the 10 men who gave the evil report were struck dead instantly.
Do you know what important lesson those men and their families learned that day? Do you know what profound lesson the whole nation learned that day? It was the same lesson God is trying to teach us today: life is short. Make every day count. Now watch what Israel does when they learn how offended God is. Let’s read Numbers 14: 39-45.
“Then Moses told these words to all the children of Israel, and the people mourned greatly. And they rose early in the morning and went up to the top of the mountain, saying, Here we are, and we will go up to the place, which the Lord has promised, for we have sinned! And Moses said, Now why do you transgress the command of the Lord? For this will not succeed. Do not go up, lest you be defeated by your enemies, for the Lord is not among you. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you shall fall by the sword, because you have turned away from the Lord, the Lord will not be with you. But they presumed to go up to the mountaintop. Nevertheless, neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses departed from the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who dwelt in that mountain came down and attacked them, and drove them back as far as Hormah.”
What did they do? How did they respond? As soon as Moses told them what they had done and what God was going to do about it, they were gripped with that one little word that haunts too many of our lives, that little “R” word. Anybody know it? REGRET! They knew they had missed out on abundant life. They knew they were passing up the Promised Land. They knew they had offended God. They knew they were condemned to life in the wilderness, and they knew they were condemned to die in the wilderness. And they regretted giving in to their fear.
They regretted their decision so much that they tried to take the land anyway, even after Moses told them their efforts were futile. God wasn’t with them now. He had given them their moment of opportunity and they passed it up. But surely if the land had been promised to them they could take it. They would prove to God they were serious, but all they really proved by going in to the land now was that they still weren’t willing to be obedient to God. And so they got whipped and were driven away from Canaan. For the next 40 years they’d march around in that wilderness to live with their regret.
The Bible is full of people who knew about regret, and Jesus dealt with that issue on more than one occasion. But there’s one chapter in the gospels I want to draw your attention to very quickly. Turn with me to Luke 9. There are two sections of this chapter that speak to this issue. The first is in Luke 9:23-26. Jesus said that the only way to really experience life was to give up your life for His sake. But there would be some who, for whatever reasons would try to save their lives, but in reality would end up losing them. Those were people who would be ashamed in the judgment: they would be people filled with regret. The man who refuses to spend time with his family because it cuts in to his play time is trying to save his life, but can’t see he’s already lost it. The person who refuses to serve God because of what he or she will have to give up is trying to save his life, but can’t see he’s already lost it. Standing before Jesus they’ll know something about regret. So at the end of this same chapter, Jesus addresses those who refuse to follow…those who have more excuses than desire. Jesus said that “no man, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Do you suppose Adam and Eve knew anything about regret? What about Cain? Do you think King Saul had any regrets after God stripped him of His anointing? While David poured his heart out to God over the life of his little baby, do you think he knew about regret? What do you think drove Judas to take his 30 pieces of silver back to the chief priests? What drove him to purchase that field? What filled his heart as he put the rope around his neck that would take his life? It was regret.
So what’s the answer? If life really is short and we really do want every day to count…if we’re going to get to the end of our lives and have no regrets, then how are we to spend our days? Jesus told us. We’ve got to give ownership of them to Him. We’ve got to lose our lives for His sake. We’ve got to be so absolutely given over to Him that when He says to do a thing or to go some place or to say some thing, then that’s exactly what we’re going to do, when He says to do it. It really boils down to living each day of our lives with a kingdom focus.
That’s easier said than done, but it can be done. Is your life absolutely given over to Jesus Christ? Is He really the Lord of your life? Is He the One calling the shots? Will you be able to stand before Him unashamed with what you’ve offered to Him with your life?
Maybe you still don’t see how that helps, or how that does anything to alleviate or eliminate any of our regrets. But it does. Because you see, there are so many unimportant things in our lives that Jesus speaks perspective into. So you regret that you didn’t buy that hot rod or you regret that you didn’t finish some project. A kingdom focused life may demonstrate that in the grand scheme of things those particular things didn’t really matter. Lot’s wife regretted having to give up those sorts of things, and look what happened to her.
Following Jesus puts life into perspective. Life is short. And I don’t know about you, but I want every day that I live to count. I want to know that when I get to the end of my life, whether that be this year or in 40 years, that it has been spent on something significant: that I have made my mark. That’s a God-given desire, a desire that can only really be satisfied by Christ. If that’s what we want, then we’d better make sure we’re spending each day in the center of His will, doing what He says, living lives of humble obedience one day at a time: offering to God a life committed to His kingdom values and goals.
Had Israel done that they’d have gone into the Promised Land. Had Adam and Eve done that we don’t know how different the world might be. What might have happened had Judas responded to Jesus’ differently? There’s no way to know. We only know how it did turn out. But here are some questions you really should spend some time considering:
• Jesus Christ is calling you to follow Him closer than you have been. What blessings will you pass up if you keep your distance?
• What lives will go unchanged because we’re too busy to pray for them?
• What riches will go unnoticed because we don’t like to read God’s Word?
• How would your family dynamic change if you really began to serve your husband or wife?
• How would your relationships change if you were completely honest and obedient with your parents?
• What would you attempt for God if you could trust Him in that decision you have to make? If you weren’t stalling out of fear?
There are so many of these questions. What’s going on in your life may be completely different than what’s going on in my life. For me, I finally decided to quit leading out of fear of failure or out of fear of what others might think. I decided to let go of those fears because without realizing it I was trying to save my life, when in reality I was losing my life. I decided to follow Christ. I had put my hand to the plow years ago. It was time to quit looking around and looking back and get my heart and head fully engaged in where God was trying to take me. Life is short. I want to make every day count for Christ. He’ll take care of whether my life has significance. He’ll do the same in your life too if you’ll let Him.
Life is a vapor. It is here today and gone tomorrow. Will you seize this day God has given you? Or will you be like Israel and wait until the opportunity has passed you by? Will you lose your life for Christ? Or will you try to save it? Will you live your life on purpose? On God’s purpose? Never mind who goes with you. Remember that God punished the 2 million and extolled the faith of the 2. They took a risk and believed God. And all too quickly they learned that there’s death in the wilderness. Real life is in the battle of taking Canaan in God’s timing.
