The Life of Moses Sermon 17
Bible Studies in Numbers-Chapter 1
Num. 1:1; Ex. 13:17-18; I Cor. 10:5-6
THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS
The land of Canaan was a two weeks’ journey from Egypt, 150 miles up the coastal King’s Highway, where armies and merchant traders had traveled for hundreds of years. But when God delivered two million (Nu. 1:46 records 603,550 soldiers) Jewish slaves around 1300 B.C., He did not take them there on the highway but on “His way,” through the desert.
The Bible says, “When Pharoah let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through Philistine territory, though that was shorter.” For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt. So God led the people around by the desert ... (or wilderness)” (Ex. 13:17-18).
The trip of four months took forty years (Dt. 2:7). Stephen called this, “The church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38). I don’t ask you today IF you are in the wilderness, I ask you WHERE you are in the wilderness? The Israelites got from Egypt down to Mount Sinai in three months (Ex. 19:1).
They stayed at Sinai for eleven months and five days (Nu. 10:11). You find this in the Book of Exodus. Then it took them 38 and a half years to get from Sinai to Canaan, a journey of three weeks, or 300 miles. They were not allowed to enter Canaan until everyone over age 20, who came out of Egypt, except Joshua and Caleb, died in the desert. Paul said, “Their graves were scattered all over the desert” (1 Cor. 10:5), probably more than a million. You will find this and the last few days at Sinai (1:1-10:10) in the Book of Numbers, which has been called, “The longest funeral march in history.”
Why did a three-week trip take more than 38 years? Because the people refused to obey God and enter the land. When they were out of Sinai about eleven days (Dt. 1:2) at Kadesh-Barnea, two-thirds of the way there, they sent twelve spies to survey the land.
When the committee came back and reported the size and strength of the people, all except two, Joshua and Caleb advised not going in. The people agreed and tried to stone Moses.
When Moses prayed for them God said, “I have forgiven them, but as surely as I live, not one of them will ever see the land I promised ... In this desert your bodies will fall - every one of you twenty years old or more ... except Caleb ... and Joshua” (Nu. 14:20-30). They then wandered in the desert for 38 years (Dt. 2:14) until this came true.
This long sad journey will be our study for the next few weeks. You may ask why? What possible interest could we have in this? Much! For their failure can easily be ours.
Paul said, “Now these things happened as examples (literally TYPES) to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things like they did.” (1 Cor. 10:5-6) ... and were written down as warnings for us on whom the end of the ages has come. So if you think you are standing firm, be careful, you might be ready to fall” (10:11-12).
The Bible takes great interest in these desert years. Paul, in 1 Cor. 9:24-10:13, looks at all the forty years, from Egypt to Canaan and warns us that we Christians can be discarded like those bodies in the desert, when it comes to SERVICE.
He says in 1 Cor. 9:27, “I beat my body (probably a figure denoting the rigid self discipline of is whole nature, physical and spiritual - see Rom. 12:1), and make it my servant, lest, after preaching to others, I myself might become a castaway.”
SALVATION Psalm 95 and Hebrews, in its long section on these years (Heb. 3:7-4:11), especially the crisis at Kadesh, talks about a more serious possibility - church members, who think they are saved, being discarded like those bodies in the desert, when it comes to SALVATION. Hebrews says, “We are His house (family), if we hold on to our courage ... (3:1) ... I declared they will never enter my Rest” (3:11, Ps. 95:7-8) ... “See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart, that turns away from the living God” (3:12). Jude 5 says, “God destroyed those who did not believe.”
Paul says God “bore with” these people (Acts 13:8), which means He “endured their behavior” (Amplified Bible). Amos 5:25-27 says they worshiped heathen idols all through the desert years and not Him (Acts 7:42-43, Dt. 32:17).
So you see how God, in scripture, points us back to these desert years. But remember this, it also points us back to THOSE WHO WERE DEVELOPED: to those in the new generation, who, under Joshua, went in and took the land. Moses, to encourage them, preached a series of sermons in Deuteronomy, some dealing with God’s faithfulness in the desert years. He said, “The Lord your god has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast desert. These forty years the Lord has been with you, and you have not lacked anything” (Deut. 2:7). What an encouragement! God may ask us to travel through the desert wilderness, but He will go through it with us and provide for our every need.
So, my friends, as we begin our journey today, from Sinai to Canaan, I ask you, which path will you take? Will it be that of those who were DISCARDED by the Lord as useless and died in the desert, or of those who were DEVELOPED by the Lord and used in His service. Where are you in the wilderness? Think with me first about ...
I. THE WHEN OF THE WILDERNESS (Ex. 40:34-38; Nu. 1:1-2)
Although Stephen and Paul view the whole forty year period from Egypt to Canaan as Israel’s time in the wilderness, Numbers deals with the wandering years after Sinai. It begins, “The Lord God spoke to Moses in the Tabernacle (lit. TENT OF MEETING) in the Sinai Desert on the first day of the second month of the second year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, saying, ‘Number (take a census) of the whole Israelite communities ...’ (Nu. 1:1-2).
About one year after the arrival at Sinai the holy tabernacle, designed by God and built by the people was completed (Ex. 40:17, 19:1). And when it went up, the glory of God, (34-38; Nu. 9:15-23), came down from the mountain and entered it. When it moved they moved. When it stopped, they stopped. God promised to go with them in His glory as their guide and their guardian.
I grew up watching “Rawhide” on TV, as each episode began with Trail Boss, Gil Favor, saying, “Head ‘em up! Move ‘em out!” And thus began another dusty dangerous journey. That’s what we have here. God says to Moses about the more than two million Israelites who had been camped at the foot of Sinai for eleven months, “Head ‘em up, Moses, move ‘em out!
It’s time to leave the worship of the mountain and go to the desert and the warfare of the promised land. You have experienced My mighty power getting you out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and down to Sinai (Ex. 12:18). You have accepted My national laws (Ex. 20:24), and agreed to obey them. You have built my Tabernacle (Ex. 25-31) and commissioned Aaron and his family as my Priests (Ex. 28-29). You have received my sacrificial system with all its blood sacrifices to deal with your disobedience (Leviticus). My glory has come down from the mountain to fill this Tabernacle and guide you wherever you go (Ex. 40:34-38). It’s time to do! Head ‘em up, Moses, move ‘em out! Canaan is waiting.”
Twenty days after this command (Nu. 1:1; 10:11), days filled with intensive preparations (1:1-10:10), the people of God set out. For the first time in human history, God had a congregation of worshipers which had His glorious presence in the center, with a house of worship, with a sacrificial system pointing forward to Jesus, and with a Holy Book, the Bible, where Moses was writing God’s words. God had been in the center of worship for a nation, for a called out, redeemed, assembly of congregation or church following Him wherever He leads. This is the when of the wilderness. But think next of ...
II. THE WHERE OF THE WILDERNESS
We know where this desert is GEOGRAPHICALLY - the 300 miles of desert between Sinai and the Dead Sea. But where is it SPIRITUALLY? What does it mean to us as Moses, Amos, Psalm 95, Jeremiah, Paul, Jude and Hebrews warn us about it? Through the years, the answer seemed obvious.
Our wilderness journey is the journey of life where we, like Israel of old, battle the ENTICEMENTS TO SIN and the INFLICTIONS OF SUFFERING.
The wilderness is this world, this journey we call life. The respected commentator, C. H. Mackintosh says, “... the camp of Israel was a type ... a type of what? A type of the Church of God passing through this world. The testimony of scripture is ... distinct on this point” (Notes On the Pentateuch, p. 433, Loizeaux Bros., 1972). Agreeing with him are men like Spurgeon, Maclaren and Parker.
The older writers had no trouble seeing the desert as our troubled trip through this world, as Pilgrim’s headed to the promised land of heaven. Thus we sing, “On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand/And cast a wishful eye/To Canaan’s fair and happy land/Where my possessions lie.”
All this has changed of late. Modern writers in the Higher Christian Life, or Victorious Christian Life movement, highly spiritualize Israel’s journey. Egypt symbolizes our lost condition. The wilderness symbolizes the Christian who has been converted (delivered from Egypt) but wanders around in a carnal, immature state. The Promised Land they say is not a picture of heaven, but of victory over sin. We are called to get out of the wilderness and into Canaan.
This makes for dramatic preaching, and certain parallels CAN be drawn, but if we press this too far, we distort the scriptures and divide the church. The harsh warnings from scripture that these people turned from the living God (Heb. 3:12) and were loathed by God (Ps. 95)
ALL THROUGH THE DESERT YEARS prevent us from seeing all these people in the new generation as saved. Paul says, “God was not pleased with MOST of them” (1 Cor. 10:5) and the parallels and warnings he gives seem directed to all church members in their daily lives (1 Cor. 9:27-10:11). He didn’t say some of you need to hear this. When Peter described heaven as “an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven” (1 Pet. 1:4). The word inheritance was the Old Testament word for the Promised Land of Canaan (Dt. 15:4; 19:10).
And most of all, the Israelites in Canaan were not victorious people of God. They didn’t drive out all the tribes (Jud. 1:19). Their dedication seems to have died with Joshua as their children, who brought in the dreadful period of the Judges were described as “a generation who did not know the Lord or the work He had done for Israel” (Jud. 2:10). The new generation had preacher religion and their influence over their own children was worthless.
In fact, the new generation, anything but victorious, in the desert, sinned just like their fathers and made Moses so mad that he sinned (Nu. 20). Listen to Jeremiah’s verdict on the new generation, “They did not ask, where is the God who led us through this barren wilderness” (Jer. 2:6).
The real danger of making the wilderness a picture of carnal Christianity and Canaan a picture of victorious Christianity, is that it fosters perfectionism, it smacks of pride and it produces the horrid notion that some of us are God’s spiritual “elite” who have arrived spiritually. I can do no better than quote the first thing Paul said after 1 Cor. 10:11 where he called the wanderings a warning to us.
He said, “Therefore, let anyone who think he stands, take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). There are lessons we can learn from Israel in the wilderness and from Israel in Canaan - lessons both good and bad. But to feel we have left the wilderness, is to feel secure and safe.
And as the Puritans put it, “The worst sin of all is to be conscious of no sin.” The most needed room in all our lives is the room for improvement.
III. THE WHEREFORE OF THE WILDERNESS (Heb. 11:13-16)
Life, my friends, is a hard and sometimes lonely journey. It has been called a lonely trip between two hospitals - the one we are born in and one we die in.
Two things make it a wilderness and they both began in Genesis three. God’s beautiful universe that He called “good” and man’s garden home was turned into a wilderness of SIN and SORROW. Oh, how our lives are blighted by sin within. Paul learned that and in Romans seven cried out, “Who will deliver me from this body of sin and death?” (Rom. 7:24).
There is also the blight of sins without. David learned that when he slept with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, and saw her husband die and two of his sons die because of it. Oh, how we would ourselves and those we love with sin!
There are also sins withstood. Women are raped, children are run over by drunk drivers, life savings are stolen, parents are neglected, children are abused, Pauls are beheaded, Jesus Christ is crucified in this sin cursed wilderness.
And to sin is added SORROW. Disease and death torture our bodies and leave them scattered in graves through the desert in which we live. Physically we will all die in this desert.
But, praise God, we can live and triumph spiritually. The Book of Hebrews, which is largely built around the desert years and the failure of Kadesh has a roll call of the faithful in chapter eleven. It names some great Old Testament saints (11:1-34), but then speaks of nameless “others”( 11:35) who “refused to be released and so gain a better resurrection.
Some faced jeers and flogging and others were chained and put in prison ... stoned ... cut in half ... put to death by the sword ... destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains ...” (11:35-38).
That was their AGONY and all who travel the road of life long enough know it well. But praise God, Hebrews eleven’s theme is not AGONY but VICTORY.
It says, “ ... they were pilgrims and strangers on earth ... longing for a better country - a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them” (11:13b-16). Our mighty God can take sorrow and even sin and use them like a surgeon uses a scalpel to make us better and stronger people.
He wants to populate heaven with saints and soldiers who conquer sin and suffering by not letting either or both of them destroy their faith or deter their faithfulness. The Israelites followed that Tabernacle glory and so do we. Our blessed Lord went through the desert of life, met sin and sorrow and Satan head on and won. We are following Him to heaven’s portals where we will claim His victory forever as our own.
On the eve of what proved to be one of the fiercest battles of the Civil War, a group of young Christian soldiers, barely out of their teens met to pray. They all wrote letters home that night and before they did, they wanted a statement of faith, they would all write - one to strengthen them in the battle and comfort their families back home in case they didn’t make it.
(What a picture of one of the many ways sin and sorrow turn us all into soldiers, and make this beautiful world a wilderness.) One of the boys picked up a hymnal and found in it just the words they all wanted to say,
My faith looks up to Thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior divine.
Now hear me while I pray,
Take all my guilt away,
O let me from this day, Be wholly Thine.
While life’s dark maze I tread,
and griefs around me spread
Be Thou my guide
Bid darkness turn to day,
Wipe sorrow’s tears away
Nor let me ever stray, From Thee aside.
When ends life’s transient dream,
When death’s cold sullen stream
Shall o’er me roll
Blest Savior then in love,
Fear and distrust remove
O bear me safe above, A ransomed soul.
–Ray Palmer
What a song as we go from life’s desert to heaven’s portals
