Courage To Fulfill God's Purpose
Numbers 13 & 14
The book of Numbers is one of the most challenging books in the Old Testament. In it we discover that God calls His people to engage in warfare. In fact, if you open to the very beginning of the book, you'll see that this is its opening theme.
Numbers 1: 1 says, “On the first day of the 2nd month of the 2nd year, after the Israelites came out of Egypt, the Lord told Moses to take a census.” Particularly he's to list every man by name, and in verse 3 we learn that Moses and Aaron are to pay close attention to those who are able to serve in the army. That gives us an indication of where the book is going; it’s time for them to prepare to invade the land God has promised to give them.
In Genesis, God CHOOSES His people. In Exodus, God REDEEMS His people. In Leviticus, God INSTRUCTS His people. And in Numbers, God COMMANDS His people. After one year below Mount Sinai we find the Israelites preparing to break camp. And now, in the 2nd month of the 2nd year, God leads them forward into battle to conquer the land He's promised to give them.
It’s with this in mind that we come, I think, to probably the most famous story in the Book of Numbers. In chapter 13, Moses sends the spies into Canaan. They travel for 40 days gathering intelligence, but when they come back, things start to go badly wrong. The majority take the view, despite the fact that God has clearly revealed His purpose for His people, that this land can't be taken. The spies communicate a profound pessimism to the people, and the people of Israel who are on the verge of great victories start to lose heart and become unwilling to press forward any further.
The result is that God determined that this generation of people wouldn't enter the land.
They spend the next 38 years wandering around in the desert. The rest of the Book of Numbers tells us about these wanderings until they've all died off and their children have taken their place in the adult community. And so, in a sense, Numbers is a book that need never have been written. It's a book that tells us the consequences of making choices based on sight instead of choices based on faith. It's a book about how God brought His people to the threshold of wonderful things, but a destructive spirit of pessimism crept in, and God said, “I’ll wait 40 years until another generation takes their place. And then I'll do what I promised to do.”
It's a sobering book. That’s why I say it's one of the most challenging Books in the Old Testament. It’s the story of unnecessary detours for a group of people who were faced with an open door of opportunity and missed it.
And it leaves us asking the question, “How could that possibly have happened? How could God's chosen, and redeemed people — who knew the presence of God and were called to fulfill His purposes — miss their calling and be a wandering, aimless, believing people?”
There are 3 things that I want us to see from this tragic story, this morning.
First, the circumstance that led to this huge disaster, the choice they made, and then the consequence of it. As we move from that, I want us to see how we can avoid going down that pathway.
Let’s begin by looking at…
#1: The Circumstance:
The circumstance starts — and it's important to pick up the background here — with…
ð Complaining People.
Chapter 11, verse 1 sets the scene for us. This is as soon as they're breaking camp and starting to move forward. We're told that the people complained about the hardships in the hearing of the Lord. And chapter 11 tells us how they complained about their food, and chapter 12 tells us how Miriam and Aaron began to complain about their leader, Moses. It's always dangerous when you start to complain about what God has given you, and it's crystal clear from these 2 chapters that a spirit of grumbling got going among the people, and it greatly displeased God. God gave them their food. God gave them their leader, when He sent Moses. But somehow at the very point where great things lay ahead of them, a discontented spirit began to creep in.
And of course, this is infectious. Once it gets into a few people, it starts to spread like butter on a hot biscuit. One person starts to complain. The natural reaction of his or her friends is to encourage the complaint because they're friends, and soon there's a whole group of people who, although they've been uniquely blessed by God, become deeply dissatisfied with what God has given them.
This is the background to the disastrous decision made in Numbers 14. You know, it's tough to make a good decision with a bad attitude. The background to things going terribly wrong starts right here with this festering spirit of grumbling among people who are uniquely blessed.
This critical spirit did something to them, and it always does. A critical spirit will drain spiritual life from us. It'll suck the passion of our commitment to Christ right out of us. It'll leave us spiritually impotent so that when God comes with a fresh challenge to us, we won’t be able to rise and respond to it. This is a serious warning. We need to be on the watch for the emergence of a critical and complaining spirit, because that's what comes and takes hold of us before bad decisions are ever made.
Not only were there complaining people but there were…
ð Complacent Leaders
In chapter 13, verse 3 the spies are sent out, and it’s clearly pointed out that they were the leaders of the Israelites. So, here's this group of leaders sent out to gather vital intelligence that will help Moses to plan the accomplishing of God's will. After 40 days behind enemy lines, they come back to tell Moses that the will of God is not possible...it’s not achievable. “We can 't do it,” they say. “The land is good, but it's already occupied by powerful forces. The whole project is obviously too difficult and beyond our ability us.”
It's very interesting to me that these 10 spies make absolutely no reference to God whatsoever in their report. They just simply announce the view that based on the intelligence available now, we’re unable to advance any further with the project that God has given.
So here are leaders who have stopped asking the question, “What does God want us to do?”; and have focused on the question, “What is manageable?” Folks, whenever church leadership makes that shift, it'll prove to be fatal for the people of God. It's a powerful lesson for us that is clear in the Bible and speaks to all of us who have been given the responsibility of leadership. Fellas, listen to me here. Don’t you dare ask the question, “What is manageable?”. You must always focus attention on what God is calling you as elders of this church to do. What is His revealed will?
Now, I'm not talking about justifying any harebrained scheme a leader happens to have. That's dangerous. What we're talking about is the clearly revealed will of Almighty God. If I've lost my focus on what God has called me to do and I'm just merely operating at the level of what is pragmatically manageable, then I'm on the verge of being in the same position that led Israel to wander in the desert for 38 years like a chicken with its head cut off.
Secondly, let’s look at…
#2: The Choice:
It's easy for us to sit in a comfortable place like this and imagine that if we'd been voting in the congregation on whether to invade Canaan or not, that we'd have, without any consideration concerning the report from the 10 spies, voted, “Yes.” I wonder if you would.
Let's try standing in their shoes for a minute. God had done more for them than they'd ever asked or even thought possible. They'd been brought out of Egypt. They'd been forgiven of their sins. They'd been provided with food every day. God had led them. They had the gift of God's presence. From the fullness of God's grace, these people, like us, were incredibly blessed. But now God comes to these tremendously blessed people and says, “I'm calling you to do something that will cost all of you a lot.” God wants them to enter Canaan and take ground that has been a stronghold of Satan for many years. That will cost a great deal, because people will die in the fighting.
Thinking about this proposition from their perspective, I can understand why, when it actually came to the crunch, there were many people who said, “Why can't we stay in the desert holding our services, enjoying the presence of God? That way all of us can have our evenings at home, raise our children in peace, and keep right on enjoying the blessings of God.”
So, in chapter 14 they make a choice. Look with me at verses 1 & 2, “That night the people of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, ‘if only we'd died in Egypt or in this desert!”, and that's exactly what God allowed them to do.
In essence, they were saying, “We are, at this time, unwilling to do what God has clearly revealed, because after having done a careful evaluation, we've decided the personal cost of obedience to the will of God is too high.”
The choice they made leads to…
#3: The Consequence:
Look at verse 11, "The LORD said to Moses, ‘How long, will these people’ — That’s God's loved people. This is a people who gather around the sacrifice and worship. "How long will these people treat me with contempt?" God says. That's pretty strong language.
Here’s my definition for “treating God with contempt”: When our obedience to the revealed will of God becomes conditional on our personal levels of comfort, we are treating God with contempt.
We say, “0h God, we're thrilled to receive all of your good gifts, but if you hold in front of us a cross, we'll move away from you, because our commitment is to the gifts you give, not to your cross…not to you personally”. That's treating God with contempt. God sees these people who come out of their tents every morning and gather His daily blessing of manna and all kinds of other blessings that are poured into their lives, but are unwilling to break outside the narrow boundaries of their own comfort zones to do what He asks them to do.
God says I regard that as personally insulting. And so, in verse 22, God says, “Not one of these people who have taken this attitude towards me personally will ever enter the land I promised on oath to their forefathers.” It's interesting that in verse 2 they said, “if only we had died in the desert…”, and now God says that's exactly what’s going to happen.
I believe it's important for us to understand the point of all of this. They weren't finally spiritually lost. This isn't a question of whether ultimately, they belong to God or not, because God was faithful to them even in the desert. The point isn't that somehow, they were saved or lost. That didn't happen.
The point is that this generation of people who had experienced the abundant grace of God contributed absolutely nothing to the purpose of God. They were STILL the people of God…they were STILL surrounded by His grace…they were STILL covered by the blood of the sacrifice…they held worship services for 38 years, but in all that time nothing happened to advance the purposes of God, which was to bring His people into Canaan.
So, how are we going to avoid being like that? Do you feel the pain of that question? It would be so easy just to live as a redeemed, loved child of God within my comfort zone, holding services of worship, rejoicing in the redeeming love of Christ, meeting in our holy huddles week in and week out, and doing nothing to advance the purposes of God. How do we avoid that?
Paul takes up this story in 1 Corinthians 10 and applies it to a local church in the New Testament, where some people were carrying on immorally in secret, and nobody was doing anything about it. Paul says you need to be careful you don't become like the generation of Israel in the wilderness, because you're redeemed people of God. He says to the Corinthians, be careful you don't become unprofitable, useless, ineffective at achieving God’s will and purposes. Paul says, “That’s why I exercise self-discipline, because I want to be careful that after having preached to others, I myself don't become unprofitable, that I don’t become a saved person who's of little use in the hand of God.” That's what that whole generation of Israelites was like. How are we going to avoid being there?
There are several things the Bible teaches us from this chapter of Israel’s history book that I want to mention.
#1: We Must Be Clear About Our Calling:
Our calling is to…
ð A life of UNCONDITIONAL OBEDIENCE to all that God has told us to do.
Our calling isn't that we simply become sponges soaking up God's blessing, though His blessings are poured out to us in abundance. My calling is to a life of unconditional obedience to all that God has told me to do through His Word.
The clearly revealed will of God for the Israelites was that they were to go into Canaan.
The clearly revealed will of God to me, to us, is found supremely in the Great Commandment and in the Great Commission: “Love your neighbor with all your heart, love God with all your heart, go make disciples of all nations by baptizing them and teaching them to obey God unconditionally. Go into the cold, dark places of industry and of business and love these stone-cold people. Go into the nations of the world where Christ is not known, where they'll take you to court or put you in the grave, and reclaim lives from the darkness for Jesus Christ. And then see that these people are nurtured and built up in their faith.” My friend’s, that's our calling.
We're not called to a life of convenience. We're called to a life of obedience. Israel had been incredibly blessed. The more God blesses us, the harder it is to live a sacrificial life, the more we get the idea that our personal blessings are the ultimate end of all things. Satan tempts us to develop the attitude that says, “Christ died to bless me. The church is an institution that exists to meet my needs.”
No. The Church of Jesus Christ exists to do the work that God has commissioned us to do. It's to bring love and bring the gospel into the world. We exist to be fully obedient to Christ whatever the cost. We exist to be the body of Christ as He is the head. We're to be His hands. We're to be His feet. We're to be the mouth through which His Word is spoken. We must be absolutely clear about our calling. We must be ready to pay any cost in the pursuit of our calling.
Jesus tells us that, “The kingdom of God is like a pearl merchant who found a pearl of great price, and he sells all that he has to obtain it.” He says that, “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed; but if it falls into the ground and dies, it will produce many seeds.” Jesus never tells us what that cross will be, only that we have to take it up. He says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
The calling is to a life of unconditional obedience where…
ð The price is UNKNOWN:
And some of us have it screaming within our hearts, “I wouldn't go into anything where the price is unknown.” Well, then, if that's our attitude then we can't fully follow Jesus Christ. And if we can’t fully follow Christ then heaven isn’t in our future eternal plans.
Following Christ costs everything. My MONEY belongs to Christ. That’s hard to say that. But having said it, the only question is, “What does He want me to do with it?” My TIME belongs to Christ. That's hard to say, too; but now that we’ve said it, the only question is, “What does He want to do with it?” My LIFE belongs to Jesus Christ. That's sometimes the most difficult thing to say, but having said it, the only question is, “What does He want me to do with it?” That's why Paul can say in Philippians 1:21, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” We must be absolutely clear about our calling, and then be willing to pay any price to fulfill it.
And the last thing is this:
#2: We Must Keep Our Eyes Focused On The Crown:
Let me end this morning simply by telling you the story of 2 people that we'll recognize who made very different choices.
One was a successful entrepreneur who knew that God was laying claim to his life. He came to Jesus and said, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus recognized that this man's money was choking the spiritual life out of him and that the only way this particular individual would ever get free in that fight was to give it away. So, Jesus said to him, “Go and sell what you have, give it to the poor, and then come follow me.” This guy knew the calling, and he knew the cost. But that was all he could see. And the Bible tells us that he went away sorrowfully.
As I see this guy, in my mind's eye, walking away, I want to run after him and say, “Man, don't you realize that you were just invited by the Son of God to share life with Him? He said to you personally, ‘Come and follow me,’ and there are millions who follow you in history who would've given anything to have the kind of opportunity that was opened up to you.” He went away sorrowful, because although he had heard the calling and knew the cost, he couldn't see anything beyond it. He couldn’t focus on the reward.
The other person is our Lord Jesus Christ. The Son of God came into the world, and He knows the calling. He says, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me.” It's life for me to do the will of God. I have no other agenda apart from my Father's will. I'm sold out for this single purpose.
He knows the cost…was ready to pay any price. He said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things at the hands of the chief priests and the teachers of the law. He must be killed, and after that He must rise again.” And Peter came and said, “Oh, don 't do that.” And Jesus, the Gospel tells us, set His face to go to Jerusalem. That's courage.
But the New Testament a little later tells us how He did this. In Hebrews 12:2 it says, “We are to fix our eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross.” In other words, where God held the cost of the cross in front of Him, He didn't focus on it.
Instead He looked through the cross and focused on the joy that was before Him, the other side of the cross. And that's how He endured it. He focused on the crown. In the words of Isaiah from chapter 53, “After the suffering of His soul, He will see the result, and He will be satisfied.”
Dr. Alan Redpath, a great preacher from England in the last generation was preaching at a convention in England many years ago. He’d already retired and was looking back over his life in an emotional sermon. One thing that he said in that sermon really stood out. He said, “I've asked God for 10 more years, so I can live them more fully for Him.”
And do you know what? That’s almost exactly what God gave him.
As we close, let me pose a very sobering question for all of us to seriously think about. “If God gives us 10 more years before Christ should return, what will we have done to advance the kingdom of God, to push beyond our own comfort zone, to do more than to enjoy worship services and personal blessings?”
I urge each of us to realize our calling as disciples of Christ and to courageously rise up to accomplish the purpose of the Lord's church; and that's the purpose of winning the lost, building up the saved, and leading this community in integrity and morality. The cost is high, but it must be paid in order for us to follow Christ completely.
For some of you here God is calling you to give Him control of your life. What does it cost you? It requires that you be humble yourself and submit your life to His control by walking down the aisle, confessing your faith before this group of people, repenting of your sins, being immersed into Christ, and then living the Christian life. Is that too expensive? It wasn't too expensive for Christ to go to Calvary to purchase our salvation for us. This is a small thing that He asks us to do in comparison to the great thing that He did for us. Besides that, what will you be giving up if you're willing to pay this price? You'll be giving up worry in exchange for peace. You'll be giving up guilt in exchange for forgiveness. You'll be giving up judgment in exchange for mercy. You'll be giving up hell in exchange for heaven. So, will it cost you? Absolutely. But the cost is worth the benefits, when you look at the outcome, don't you think?
