Listen Up!

Numbers 14: Israel’s Rebellion in the Wilderness

Old Testament reading today is in Numbers 14, verses 1 through 12. 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 this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land? To fall by the sword, our wives and our little ones will become a 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. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the people of Israel.

And Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had 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 it 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. And do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people of 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 at the tent of meeting to all 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, in spite of the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them. I will make of them, of you, a nation greater and mightier than they.

2 Peter 1: Growth in Faith, Virtue, and Love

New Testament reading is from 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 through 11. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. May be seated.

Hebrews 3 and the Call to Hold Fast

I'd ask you this morning to take your Bibles and turn with me to Hebrews chapter 3 as we continue our study through this book, seeking to understand what God has to say to us. Hebrews chapter 3. I'll be reading the first 15 verses.

You follow along as I read. Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house.

For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.

Now, Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant to testify to the things that were to be spoken later. But Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years.

Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, they always go astray in their hearts and they have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Take care, brothers, 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. For we have come to share in Christ. If indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, as it is said today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

Let's pray. Father, now we ask that you would open your word to us, make this text alive. Help us not to look at this as some mere history lesson or some theological lesson, but help us to hear your warning to us.

Help us to hear your voice today. Thank you for your word now in Jesus' name. I am a man with a heart condition. I can't believe it. That's a term that's used for old people. When I was a kid, someone with a heart condition was on borrowed time.

Nevertheless, it's true of me, and so my life has changed. Now I have to be diligent. I have to watch what I eat. I have to get enough rest. And I have to pay attention to all kinds of other outside factors in my life.

I have to listen to exhortations now. That is, other people now tell me what I can eat and what I can't eat. They're telling me how much rest I'm getting and how much more I need. They're telling me what kind of factors now I have to eliminate, what I can do.

And I have to persevere in all of that. I can't quit, but I have to subject myself to that in the long run. Now, it takes a lot of work to stay alive, it seems. But you know what? Those qualities are the qualities that God expects from us as Christians.

Diligence, exhortation, perseverance. That's what our text tells us today. Now recall for a moment this book of Hebrews. It's a sermon written to us so that we can grasp the superiority of Jesus. He has been revealed and has proven himself superior to angels and their ministry.

Last time we were in the Word, we saw that our Hebrew pastor has asserted the superiority of Jesus even over the great Moses in verses 1 through 6. And you remember that the last thing he said was that Jesus should receive the greater glory as the builder of the house than Moses.

And that we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and are boasting in our hope. We are that house. We all belong to Christ if indeed we hold fast our confidence. And now, beginning in verse 17, he turns to warn us.

He says, therefore. That is to say, pay attention. Here is why. Here is what I'm telling you to do in light of that fact. In light of the fact that you must hold fast your confidence. Therefore. What happens when you're tempted to let go?

When we do not feel like holding fast. What do you do when you start losing confidence and letting that confidence go? So again, listen to what God says when you would rather let go than hold fast. Now remember the pressure that these Jewish Christians face.

They've been ostracized from family, publicly ridiculed. They've been imprisoned. They've lost property through confiscation because of their faith. It would be easier to abandon Jesus and go back to the older ways and take off the pressure.

Go back to the ways that even God had revealed in the old covenant. Let's just go back. It's not worth the price. But God says you can't go back. All your confidence must rest in Jesus. And so you must hold fast to that confidence.

But God means for you to hear this warning. This isn't a history lesson. This isn't just something we can learn about Hebrew Christians that live in the first century. God intends for you to hear this warning.

Now listen, you're ostracized. You're marginalized. You're ridiculed for claiming Jesus is superior to all others. And that your Christian faith is the only true religion. You've felt some of that. It seems that more difficulties loom on the horizon now for those who belong to Christ.

And we need to face that. It's going to get a little more difficult for us. I don't know how difficult, but it appears that it's going to get difficult for all those of us who claim Christ. And you may be tempted to let go rather than to hold fast.

You may be tempted to let the pressure go. Just let go of your confidence in order to take off the pressure. So here's what God says to you in this text that we have before us. Let me read it again, verses 7 through 15.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years.

Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, They always go astray in their hearts. They have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Take care, brothers, 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. For we have come to share in Christ. If indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, as it is said today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

Hear the Warning from Psalm 95

So God says, first of all, hear the warning. Hear the warning. Verses 7 through 11. Hear this warning because it's a relevant warning. God's people have faced this kind of pressure before. We're not the first to see it.

God's people have faced this kind of pressure before. And God's word has already said it. Notice what the author says. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says. Now, our writer, our pastor here, quotes David speaking in Psalm 95, verses 7 through 11.

He's quoting one of the Psalms of David. Psalm 95 is David's reflection on the Israelites standing on the bank of the Jordan, refusing to take the land after the spies brought back their report. We all know the story.

We heard it a thousand times in Sunday school. The spies came back and said, oh, we can't do it. The people are too big. The walls of their cities are too fortified. We cannot take the land. And because of that, they refused then to cross the Jordan and take the land.

And in Psalm 95, David reflects on that. Now, as you look at that Psalm, David calls on God's people to sing and rejoice and give thanks. To bow down before the Lord as the great king, as a marvelous creator.

And the fact that he has made us his people and we are the sheep of his hand. And then David says, so today, if you hear his voice, do not respond like your fathers did. And harden your heart and rebel and test God.

And so our author here, our pastor, is quoting for us from Psalm 95. You see, you can be tempted to harden your heart when you hear God's voice. You, you sitting here right now, you can be tempted to harden your heart when you hear God's voice.

And God still speaks today. It is still today. That's the point. Note, it is the voice of God you hear in scripture. You know, I hope that when you come on Sundays, you don't come saying, I can't wait.

I can't imagine this, but you might be saying, I can't wait to hear what Pastor Tim has to say. I hope you're coming here to say, what does God say in the word? The text here clearly says it is God speaking through David.

It is the Holy Spirit who's speaking through the voice of David. And you can hear God's voice today in his word. So listen up, hear the warning. God is speaking to you now in his word. And that word addresses the temptation of abandoning the promises of God in Christ.

So hear it because it's a relevant warning. But hear it as well because it describes what can happen to you. It describes what can happen to you. Now, remember what happened on that day as the nation stood looking into the promised land from the banks of the Jordan.

As they looked into that promised land and refused to go in. Do you see, do you remember as you read that and you heard it? As Joe read this morning, Numbers 14. Do you ever wonder why God was so incredibly angry at them so much so that he says,.

Moses, I'm going to wipe them out. I'm going to make a whole people from you.

Why did he get so angry? Here's why. Because God had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And he had promised that he would give this land to their descendants. He'd made the promise that he was going to do that.

Not only that, all the way back in Genesis 9. I don't know if any of you remember as we went through Genesis. But all the way back in Genesis 9, you remember that's the incident that records Noah's drunkenness, right?

And you remember that as a result of that, and this is no coincidence. Noah curses his grandson, Canaan. His grandson, he curses Canaan. In fact, the Bible records that Moses said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.

All the way back there. Now, who is Shem? Who are the descendants of Shem?

Well, the Israelites.

By the way, the word Semitic, anti-Semitic, it comes from the word Shem.

Okay?

So the Jewish people were the descendants of Shem. And God said way back in Genesis 9, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. All the way back there, he made that promise.

All the way back there, he made it clear that Canaan was going to serve these descendants. And God even made those promises more sure by making a covenant. He entered into covenant with Abraham and said, I'm promising to you and your descendants this land.

All right? And then, many hundreds of years later, you see God delivers this entire nation from the most powerful empire of the world. With these incredible wonders and signs of plagues. And then, when they're on the precipice of destruction, standing on the Red Sea, what does God do?

He destroys Egypt's chariot forces. Completely wipes them out. And then, as they're on their way to the promised land, he tells them over and over and over again, I will drive those people out from before you.

As a matter of fact, then, he also provides for them all the way there. And after all those promises and wonders, how do they respond? Did you hear it this morning? After all of that that God has said and done, how do they respond?

Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? I don't know about you, but I think I'd be pretty mad as well. And remember, God's anger is always righteous. Now, if that's not bad enough, our writer mentions here, they continued in their wayward, hard-hearted, rebellious ways for the next 40 years.

Until that entire generation was dead. Now, what our writer is telling us here is this is not merely a struggle to believe the promises of God. Rather, he calls it what? A hardening of the heart.

The refusal to believe.

You know what it's like when you say to your kids, hey, I want you to do this, and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you.

I don't get that anymore.

I'm the one who has to say it now to my kids, but you get the point, right? That's hard-heartedness. Yeah, I hear you. I don't want to do it. Right? It's hard-heartedness. It's rebellion. It's seeing the Lord's gracious work on your behalf and turning against him.

It is testing God, he says here. Instead of believing that God cared for them, they became convinced that God despised them. You want to talk about testing God? After all that he'd done for them, what do they say?

Why has the Lord brought us here that we may fall by the sword and all of our little ones will be devoured by our enemies? Instead of being convinced that he cared for them after all that he had done, they were now convinced that he despised them.

That's testing God.

And lastly, he says they're straying in their hearts, wandering away in their hearts, lost as if they didn't know what God expected. They did not trust him or love him after all that he had done. Now, what's our writer saying?

Listen now. Oh, that's interesting, we might say. But what he's saying is that you are capable of hardening your heart. That you can rebel and test God. That you can have a straying heart. And that you, all of that is true if you do not hold fast your confidence.

This is serious business. This is serious business from God. Notice as well that you need to hear this warning because it describes how God responds to such hardening and rebellion. When you fail to trust and rely on God and his promises, you provoke God.

You provoke him. Talk about dangerous. I don't know about you, but that's the one being in all the universe that I don't want to provoke. Can you imagine standing outside the cage of a lion and poking him with a stick?

How do you think the lion's going to react to that? It's not pretty, is it? Isn't it interesting that in the Chronicles of Narnia, C .S. Lewis writes, and I can't remember if it's Mr. or Mrs. Beaver, I can't remember which of the characters says it, when they're talking about Aslan, who is the lion figure who represents Jesus, and one of them says, he may be good, but he is not safe.

In fact, God is so provoked that he swears an oath. Now, we're going to see this later on in the book where God swears an oath to bless. But the question is, why would God need to swear an oath? Is he undependable?

Is God undependable? Why does he swear an oath? And an oath essentially says, may I myself be accursed and destroyed if I don't do what I promise. God took that oath. Why? That is to show you just how serious he is.

That even the God who could not lie takes an oath that says, they will not enter my rest. And the whole generation died. Everyone from 20 and older all died in the wilderness. That's how serious God was.

Obstinance, a refusal to believe, provokes God to the point that he will bring judgment. That's a warning. Hear that warning.

Hear that warning.

Heed the Warning by Diligence, Exhortation, and Perseverance

So what's the whole point of this Bible study from numbers? Not just hear that warning, but heed God's warning. Heed that warning. Verses 12 through 15. Our pastor, this Hebrew pastor, gives this warning from the Old Testament because we can fall into the same trap of unbelief, disobedience, and judgment.

So he tells you now how to hold fast your confidence. He tells us now how to do it. How we can do it. And he tells us it's done through diligence, through exhortation, through perseverance. If we're going to hold fast, we need to be diligent, we need to exhort one another, and we need to persevere.

Verse 12.

Heed the warning then by diligence. Take care. He says, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. Beware of the danger that lurks.

What is that danger? It's an evil, unbelieving heart. That's the danger that we all have to be aware of. That's the danger that lurks. He says an evil, unbelieving heart. Unbelief is the failure to trust in God and to believe His promises.

This is the essence of an evil heart. When God does so much for us, when He does so much for us in Christ, and we don't believe His promises in Christ, that is the essence of an evil heart. An evil heart refuses to trust in God, and lack of trust leads to failure to obey.

One writer put it this way. The pastor envisions no faith that does not lead to obedience, nor does he conceive of any obedience that does not stem from faith. Now, if you'd been here for Sunday school, you'd have heard all this already.

That's what we were talking about. The fact that he doesn't conceive of any faith that doesn't lead to obedience, or any obedience that doesn't stem from faith. And now, if you're saying to yourself, yep, I can see that happening with Sam.

Note that God says, lest there be any of you. Take him seriously here. Don't look at someone else. You be diligent. You take care. You look at your heart. Don't be looking at other people. Lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart.

Everyone should take this admonition seriously. No member of the church is exempt from this. Now note, such unbelief leads to apostasy. A-P-O-S-T-A-S-Y. We're going to hear that word a lot in this book.

We're going to be warned against it a lot in this book. In fact, the word that's translated, fall away, is the Greek word essentially apostasy. It's almost a letter for letter written out for us. He says your unbelieving heart can result in you turning your back on God, in walking away from him, in abandoning your belief in Christ and abandoning the obedience that you owe him.

Some of you have been here for a while.

Look around.

You'll see some spaces that are not occupied any longer by people who were once here. They walked away. They abandoned Christ. I've been here for 36 years. Some of those folks were close to my heart.

They aren't here.

They've walked away. And so he says, you must be diligent. Take care.

Be diligent.

Listen, be diligent in dealing with sin. Do not let unbelief and sin even begin to take root. When you have doubts about God's promises, listen, we all doubt, okay? We all doubt. Every one of you who's a believer has at one time or another, or many times said, I wonder if this is all true.

I wonder if this is all true.

How do I know?

We all have doubts. Right? There's nothing wrong with having the doubts. Here's the question, what do you do when you have them? And I would say to you, don't buy the crazy saying that says, everybody has doubts, don't worry about it.

Yeah, we all have doubts. What are you going to do about it? And here's what I would suggest to you. When you have doubts, don't let them lie. Start pursuing them and finding out the answers to those doubts.

Look, look to the word of God. Look to others that can help you. When you have doubts, voice them. Voice them and start looking for the answers. You know, in our flock, I mean, we're trying to deal with this in our flock, the one that Greg and I have, the first Wednesday of every month is open question.

You can ask any question you want and we encourage everybody. It doesn't matter what the question is. You can even ask the question, how do I know this is all true? Let's deal with it. Whatever the question is, you can voice it.

Let's go after it. Yeah, we all have doubts, but what do you do with those doubts? That's the important point. When you sin, repent quickly, turn away, start putting off and putting on. Don't be complacent about your sin.

Be diligent, he says, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart.

Be diligent.

But what happens when you get sloppy and you start sliding into sin?

What happens then? Well, our writer makes it clear.

That we can't fight sin and unbelief alone. So we have to help one another.

This is key.

You don't do it alone. We all need the help of one another to deal with our unbelief and our disobedience. We need help. And so he says, heed this warning by exhorting one another, verse 13. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Now, do you know what leads to an evil, unbelieving heart that causes someone to fall away? It is simply the deceitfulness of sin. Listen carefully now. Sin never advertises its lethal consequences. Think about that.

Sin never advertises its lethal consequences. But what it does instead is to deceive you by promising satisfaction and fulfillment. You've heard me say this before. I've quoted John Piper on this. No one sins out of duty.

No one says, oh man, I've got to lie today and I don't want to. Nobody does that.

Why do you lie?

Because you think if you tell the truth, there'll be bad consequences. But if you lie, there'll be good things that happen. You see, sin never advertises its lethal consequences, but instead it deceives you by promising you satisfaction and fulfillment.

Years ago, a couple came to me for counseling because the husband, we'll call him Gerald, was involved with another woman and he was ready to divorce his wife and marry the other. Why was he willing to bring heartache on his wife and his children?

Why?

Because sin had said to him and deceived him into thinking that divorce and remarriage would get him a better life. That's why. It'd be better if I was just done with this woman. I could have her.

You see?

But notice what sin's deception does. Sin's deception leads to a hard heart. It leads to a hard heart. The unwillingness to hear God or the total perversion of what God says. I can still remember sitting in the house of Hunan with Gerald one day, and he said to me that he knew it was wrong, but he was going to do it anyway.

And when he was done, when it was all said and done, he would ask God to forgive him. So I turned to this passage, and I explained to him that it wouldn't work that way. Sin's deceitfulness was going to harden his heart.

If he continued down this path, he wasn't going to ask God's forgiveness.

He never would.

His heart was going to be hardened. And this is what I told him. At one point, you're going to say, forgiveness? I haven't sinned. God wants us to be happy, which would eventually lead to divorce is okay.

Hey, if your wife is hard to live with, if your wife is a difficult woman, if she's really hard, or if you fall in love with someone else, then divorce is the right thing. And then I told him, and then a little bit further on the line, you know what's going to happen?

You're going to say, God? What God? That was a silly concept. I used to believe it, but I don't anymore. I said, that's where this will lead you. Don't think you can do it and ask God's forgiveness because your heart will be hardened and you will not respond to God.

You know, it's interesting to me that most people who have come to me and have said, I'm willing to throw it, I don't believe this stuff anymore. I don't believe this stuff anymore. I don't believe this stuff about Jesus.

I don't believe people who've come to me and said that. Let me just, I would say 90 of them have come to me and said that because they've already been entrenched in a particular sin. And now they don't believe it anymore.

It's very rarely that I have someone come to me and said, I'm not sure I believe this anymore because of these intellectual reasons. Very rarely, almost always, this throwing off of the faith is preceded by entrenchment in sin.

Until finally, the heart is hardened.

And they don't believe it anymore.

Now look, because of the great danger of sin's deceitfulness, what does he tell us to do? We must exhort one another. We must exhort one another.

What does that mean?

What does it mean to exhort? When you see someone headed down the wrong path, getting involved in sin, even if he's almost unaware of it, you must say something to him or to her. You must say something.

When that brother you see starts forging some ties, unwise at first, with another woman, get involved. You've got to speak to him. When you have friends who start missing church,.

Not just occasionally,.

But now it's becoming a little more, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? You need to say something to him. What about the sister who wants more and more, who's not satisfied with her house anymore, who seems to think, I need more and is discontented.

What are you going to do?

You going to say anything? God calls us then to intervene. And look, occasional rebukes do not suffice. Notice what he says. Every day, as long as it's called today. That's how serious this is.

You know what?

With such high stakes, with such high stakes, the judgment of God, why don't we say things to one another? Why don't we say things to one another? Oh, I just don't like conflict, someone says. Or, I just don't have the personality to do confrontation.

That's not me. Oh, okay. And then there's what I might call, what I have called bloodline blindness. You know what that is? When it involves a member of our family, like a son or a daughter, or a sister or a brother, or even our parents.

Bloodline blindness. Somehow, what we used to think was terribly wrong, eh, it's not so bad now. Or, when someone in my family is getting involved in some sin, eh, I don't want to say anything. I don't want to destroy the relationship.

I can remember when our Senator Portman, a conservative senator, found out his son was homosexual. He just didn't see what the issues were about any longer. You know, a question sometimes that haunts me is this.

How many have we lost because we did not take the opportunity to exhort someone when we first saw them starting down the wrong path? How many have we lost because we've made excuses as to why we won't say something to them?

Now listen, lest you think Superman's up here talking to you, you must know, rebuking people is very difficult for me.

It is. But I have to do it.

Here's the point.

I'm not the only one who has to do it.

He doesn't say pastors, he doesn't say shepherds and elders, make sure, no, he says you. You exhort one another. One last thing on this. You need to receive rebuke well. Receive rebuke well. People can often see us better than we can see ourselves.

Bishop Ryle, that wonderful evangelical Anglican bishop from the 19th century, contemporary and friend of Charles Spurgeon, once said, our sins are pinned on our back, we can't see them, everyone else can.