Israel Refuses To Enter Canaan (Numbers 14 - Part 1)

All right, let's turn to Numbers chapter 14. Numbers chapter 14. Marcus, would you open us in prayer and then we'll listen along.

Shut up, I'm calling you.

Sure.

Father, thank you very much for bringing us through another week, another few days, bringing us safely here for relief in the weather. And again, for this chance to sing your praises and to look into your word, we don't take it for granted at all.

We thank you very, very much. And just want to prepare our hearts now to receive your word from our pastor. We pray that you'll give great clarity of thought to him and attentiveness to us because of how important it is that we learn to hear from you.

And so bless our time together and may our time and our hearts' attitudes be a blessing to you. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen, Numbers 14.

Israel's Rebellion and the Bad Report of the Spies

So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them.

If only we had died in the land of Egypt,.

Or if only we had died in this wilderness. Why has the Lord brought us to this land? To fall by the sword? That our wives and children should become victims?

Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?

So they said to one another.

Let us select a leader and return to Egypt.

Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel. But 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 they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel.

The land we pass through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey.

Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread. Their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. And all the congregation said to stone them with stones.

Glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of meeting before all the children of Israel. Then the Lord said to Moses,.

How long will these people reject me? And how long will they not believe me with all the signs which I have performed among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them. And I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.

And Moses said to the Lord,.

Then the Egyptians will hear it. For by your might, you brought these people up from among them. And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, Lord, are among these people, that you, Lord, are seen face to face.

And your cloud stands above them. And you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. If you kill these people as one man, then the nations which have heard of your fame will speak, saying, because the Lord was not able to bring this people to the land, which he swore to give them.

Therefore, he killed them in the wilderness. And now I pray, let the power of my Lord be great, just as you have spoken, saying the Lord is long-suffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression.

But he by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation. Pardon the iniquity of your mercy, just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt, even until now.

I have pardoned, according to your word. But truly, as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, because all these men who have seen my glory and the signs which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness and have put me to the test now these 10 times and have not heeded my voice, they certainly shall not see the land of which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who rejected me see it.

But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land where he went and his descendants shall inherit it.

So last week we were in chapter 13, where the 10 spies gave the children of Israel a bad report that no, we're not able to obey God. We cannot take the land. The inhabitants are too strong. We're too weak.

And besides, there's what? There's giants in the land. There's just no way we can enter the promised land. And I think we saw the Lord's reaction. But what was the reaction of the people after hearing the bad report?

Yeah, so now the children of Israel are thoroughly discouraged. Look at verses one through four. So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried and the people wept that night. And the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron.

And the whole congregation said to them, if only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in this wilderness, why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword? You know, what kind of terrible God, in other words, would do this?

That our wives and children should become victims. Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt? So they said to one another, let us select a leader and return to Egypt. So if you remember from last week, we talked about how this may have been the plan all along, to overthrow Moses' leadership.

So how many spies were there? There were 12. Two of them were good, Joshua and Caleb. 10 were bad. 10 bad spies gave the bad report. And they might have already known going into it, even before they went out to spy out the land, they might've already decided that this is what they were going to do, so that they would come back with excuses.

So they were either liars or cowards or both. Maybe this was the plan to overthrow Moses' leadership from the start. Maybe they really just didn't think they could do it. Either way, this makes the Lord angry.

Why?

Because God said, this is the land that I'm giving you. Enter into the land. And ultimately, they said no. So they are really bringing reproach upon the name of God by saying, what kind of God would do this to lead us out into the wilderness just so we could die?

Matthew Henry writes this about verses one through four. Those who did not trust God continually vex themselves. The sorrow of the world worketh death. The Israelites murmured against Moses and Aaron and in them reproached the Lord.

See the madness of unbridled passions, which makes men wasteful of what nature accounts most dear, which is life itself. They wish rather to die criminals under God's justice than to live conquerors in his favor.

So the Israelites are discouraged.

Why?

Well, they're listening to the wrong people. And don't you know that you can get discouraged? I know I can get discouraged if I listen to the wrong people. So we wanna be careful about who we're listening to.

Yes, Larry.

And also there are times, well, in my life anyways, that I've looked at my trouble as this huge mountain that I can't overcome and I allow that to consume me. Instead of seeing how big my God is, I'm looking at how big my troubles are.

Sure. Yeah.

It's an easy thing to do. So when we listen to the wrong people, we start to see things their way instead of seeing things God's way. So who are we listening to? I just want you to stop and think for a moment.

Who are you listening to most of the day or day by day? Who are you listening? What's the voice that you're listening to?

Yours.

What do you hear?

Okay. All right.

The news. Most people listen to the news.

No.

The news.

Some don't, but a lot do. So how do we go about determining what's right and what's wrong? How do we go about determining what's true and what's false? This is why the church and Christian fellowship is so vitally important because here we're around people of like mind where God's word is sung, it's taught and it's reinforced.

So without the church and without Christian fellowship outside of the church, we're hearing other voices, right? And these other voices are flooding our mind and we start after a while, maybe not even realizing it, we're listening to that and not the voice of God.

I think of the parable of the sower, the seed that was sown among thorns. It says how the cares of this world choked them out so that they were unfruitful. The people are in a bad way here because instead of listening to Joshua and Caleb, the two men that were telling them the truth are listening to the bad spies.

And what do the spies wanna do? What's their goal now?

Yeah.

Let's get a new leader. So forget Moses, we'll get a new leader. And what was the purpose of that? To bring them into the promised land? No, to bring them back into Egypt. And this I believe is symbolic for those bad influences that we have all around us that want to lead us, trying to lead us back into our old life.

It's pretty well established that in the Bible, Egypt is a symbol of the world, right? It's a picture of the world. You've heard this, most of you. So if Egypt is a picture of the world, for the Israelites to go back to Egypt, the symbolism would be people trying to convince us to go backwards, to go back to the world.

So the children of Israel are now ready to appoint another leader who would bring them back to Egypt. Look at verse five. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.

But 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 they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, the land we pass through to spy out is an exceedingly good land.

If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread.

What do you think that means? They're our bread.

That's, it's not the people, it's not the actual human beings, but the land that the people occupy.

Okay, okay.

That's the bread.

Their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. And all the congregation said, yeah, you're right, let's go, let's take the land. Now, they wanna kill Joshua and Caleb.

All the congregation said to stone them with stones. I mean, to me, this is just, it's hard to imagine that this is their reaction,.

Yet it is.

And then as soon as they say that, the glory of God shows up. The glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of meeting before all the children of Israel. So this really does seem like an outrageous thing that they would want to stone Joshua and Caleb.

But I look at it this way. When you have an angry mob, you cannot reason with an angry mob. I mean, these people, it's like life and death. They're convinced, or this is what they're saying, either we go back to Egypt or we're gonna die.

We're gonna fall by the sword, so they're hungry, they're tired, they're afraid,.

They're upset.

There's no reasoning with them. Yes, you had your hand up.

Oh, I hate to keep sounding like a real defender of Israel all the time, except that I attained this love for them. And two out of 10 really isn't that bad. Take your own workplace and see how many other there are.

So, and I guess we grow up with this, that the Jews, you know, they're stiff-necked. And of course, the Bible says, and it's all true, but we need to remember Joshua and Caleb or some of these, even though they were in the minority, still.

These are the ones that, you know, that the Messiah and the scriptures and all the prophecies and everything have come down through. So just don't think that all Jews, because I don't look at all Jews that way.

I have so many friends now, so many saved messianic Jews over there and in the United States too.

Yeah, well, I mean, I get what you're saying because this is pretty common. If you talk, well, I remember when the movie from Mel Gibson, The Passion of the Christ came out, I remember they were saying, well, it's an anti-Semitic movie.

You know, it's painting all, even when the New Testament says the Jews, which I think the gospel writers say, you know, the Jews. And that's the complaint that Jews have that the Bible paints them in a negative light.

Yeah, but we get that as the Christians too.

But the Old Testament was written by Jews. Jews, yeah, the scriptures. You know, your history is your history, but the apostle Paul said in Romans, not all Israel is of Israel. So you can look at it this way to defend, you'd say that Joshua and Caleb were the true Israelites.

The spies, I mean, their DNA, their bloodline, yeah, they're Israelites, but in God's eyes, they're not. Joshua and Caleb are the true Israelites.

Jim.

There's a couple of examples of that very thing in the New Testament with Paul and Barnabas. It only took a couple of men to stir up a whole town, and they wanted to kill Paul and Barnabas. Fortunately, the Roman soldiers came in and rescued them, but still, when Paul tried to reason with the Jews, they wouldn't hear it.

They wouldn't have anything to do with it.

Sure, sure.

Yes.

And it basically says that when you go further, where they say that Caleb had a different spirit.

He did, he did.

Larry.

And this, I mean, this is right out in the open. It's public, but how often is there a voice, perhaps a false teacher up in the pulpit that is saying what seems like good things, but getting the people drawn away.

Yeah, yeah.

And here, I mean, it was just blatant in your face,.

The whole thing.

Yeah, and I'd never really thought of it in those terms where the 10 spies, you know, they're not preachers or anything, but they are kind of acting like a false teacher would, telling the congregation lies to lead them away from God, even though the people who would have been looking at it said, yeah, this is the right thing to do.

Why were they tempted to go back to Egypt? Because it was familiar to them. It was easier to go back than to go forward and be challenged. Last year, I did a sermon titled Backsliding or on the subject of backsliding.

I think in my opinion, it was one of the more important sermons that I've preached. I don't know if it was one of the more popular sermons that I've preached, but it's always easier to go back, but we need to be challenged.

The children of Israel here did not want to be challenged. Sometimes we don't like to be challenged because it's easier to just kind of get stuck in our rut and stay there, but we need it. If we're going to grow in the Christian life, we need to hear some hard things.

We need to be challenged. That's the only way we can move forward. So that's their problem. They don't want to do that. So starting in verse 11, God is angry and Moses now, once again, intercedes for the people.

It says, then the Lord said to Moses, how long will these people reject me? Well, how did they reject God? They didn't reject him and deny that he existed. That wasn't the issue. How did they reject God?

It says in the following portion, it says that, and how long will they not believe me?

Not what?

Believe me? With all the signs which I have performed among them. He's given them clear evidence. And I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make you a new nation greater and minor than they.

So there's three reasons why, how God felt about it, really.

Yeah, so they rejected God by not believing his word. So the application for today is people reject God by not believing the Bible. It's not, again, it's not a matter of, I don't believe he exists. They did not believe his word, his promises.

So rejecting the word of God is the same as rejecting God because he's the God of the word. So the two go hand in hand.

Yeah, Larry.

Belief, you know, like I said for most of my life, I believe, but my actions said otherwise. So by your fruits, by your fruit, you'll be known. And so what kind of fruit am I bearing, are we bearing? Is it fruit that I truly believe?

Because if I truly believe the promises of God, you know, because I mean, he, how many hundreds of years had gone by here with the promise that the promised land?

Yeah.

And they had to do something.

Right.

It wasn't just, well, we believe we can take the land. Well, they actually had to go and possess it. So even works are tied into it. Let me use this illustration. So here's a chair, right? I can say, I believe that this chair can support my weight.

Put one of the legs out over the edge here.

Yeah, well, I'm not going to do that. That would be different. But I believe this chair can support my weight. So then one of you tells me, okay, sit it, prove it. Sit in the chair. Why sit in that chair?

What does that tell you? I'm not expressing faith until I actually do something and sit down. So, you know, you can say that you believe, or they could have said that we believe that we could take the land, but if they refuse to do it, that speaks volumes.

You've heard the one about the guy walking across Niagara Falls, pushing a wheelbarrow. And they said, wow, that's really something. And he says, well, I can even do it with 150 pounds worth of bricks in it.

And he does that and he says, oh, I guess that guy can do anything. And he says, well, okay, get in the wheelbarrow.

Yeah, I do not suggest getting in the wheelbarrow. You can trust God completely. I don't know if I would trust that guy that much, but yeah, point well made. So people can deny God in different ways to just flat out deny that God even exists.

But usually it's a little more subtle or someone might even say, I believe the Bible or I know the Bible says that, but, and then they go on to explain why the Bible actually means the opposite of what it says.

So there's all different ways people deny or reject God. And because we all live in this world, it's a battle not to be conformed to the world. So the children of Israel, to them, it was a battle not to listen to these spies because they bought into it.

So the 10 spies, my point is the 10 spies are of the world. I don't think they're true Israelites in the sight of God spiritually, as you pointed out, a very good point, Joshua and Caleb. I mean, they had a different spirit.

They were true Israelites. The 10 spies were of the world. Their heart was in Egypt, right? They wanted to go back. So they saw God's word differently. Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, they heard, they believed, and they did, or they were prepared to.

The spies, they heard, they doubted, and they did the opposite. All right, any questions or comments so far?

No, all right.

The Seriousness of Unbelief and God's Threat to Start Over

Let's look at verse 12. So they went out to spy off the land for 40 days, right? This is a, talked about this, it's a time of testing. This is like a probationary period. They failed the test. The Lord said, how long will they not believe me with all the signs which I have performed among them?

Verse 12,. I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them. And I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they. Who's God speaking to here?

Moses.

So I'll make of you this great nation. I think it'd be easy to read this and just think, oh yeah, children of Israel have messed up again, and God is upset again, because this, we've read this type of thing before.

But this is different though, and we really need to stress how serious this is, what God is saying. So I think their rebellion and their failures are compounding. Their guilt is increasing. The golden calf brought it up to here, but now it's just reached a point where God isn't just looking to punish them.

He's looking to just wipe them all out. We have not seen this before. So this is completely different. What might be a problem? Because God says he's ready to do it. What would be a problem? Other than what's in the text, what people will say.

Is there any problem with God's promise to Abraham if he wipes all the people out? Would that mean the promise to Abraham could not be fulfilled?

When he said he would find another people.

So that's my question. If God did wipe them all out, with the exception of Moses and maybe Joshua and Caleb and a few, could the promise of God still be accomplished?

Why?

Because it's God's will and he can't lie.

Okay, it's God's will and he can't lie.

But that's his character. He doesn't go back on his word.

Okay.

When he establishes something, it's there.

Okay.

Well, that line from Abraham would still be present in Moses. So technically, God could do it and still keep his promise. But what would people say? They would say God didn't keep, because he delivered this people and then he wiped them out and see God didn't.

That was the accusation. Yes, Jim.

It just came to me. He said, you know, I wanna wipe these people out and I'll make a nation. He could do that. But another question would be, would he do that when he presented it to Moses? Would he actually do that?

Yeah.

Okay, that's a good question.

God's already started over once before on a larger scale. What was that called?

The flood.

God's already done this once. He could do it again. Would he though is the question. God knows the end from the beginning. He knows what's going to happen. I believe this is just an opportunity for Moses to once again intercede and for Moses to bring God's promises to him to show God's faithfulness.

I think it's a time of testing.

Yeah, and he's growing Moses and he's putting his faithfulness on display.

Marcus.

Well, we're seeing this replayed again in human history coming up into our own time because the Jews were in the land until like 70 AD when they were scattered all over the world. There's Russian Jews, there's African Jews, there's Jews everywhere all around the world.

And for almost 2 ,000 years, that's the way that it's been.

Yeah.

But now he's brought them all back into the land. Or not all of them, but many, many, many of them. And it isn't because of their trusting in him. It just was to accomplish his purposes. So he's brought them back into the land again.

Back in the first century, it really did appear that God was finished with Israel. The temple was destroyed in 70 AD. They were scattered. It really looked like to everybody, God is finished with these people.

So much so, I would argue that that is what developed into what we call replacement theology where people started interpreting the Bible. The Bible is talking about Israel and it seems to have a future for Israel.

Well, that's impossible. So that must mean the church is the new Israel. Yeah, but 2 ,000 years later, the Jews are still around while the Amalekites and all these other people are gone, they're still around.

So

Please make it clear that replacement theology is heresy. Or maybe you wouldn't call it heresy. You'd call it false doctrine.

I don't agree with it.

I'll stop short of calling it heresy, but the fact that Israelites are still here.

At least a poor method of Bible interpretation.

The fact that they're still here is another display of God's faithfulness. All right, verse 13. So God is threatening to destroy Israel, thankfully for them. He doesn't end up doing it. Moses intercedes and verse 13 says, "'And Moses said to the Lord, "'If you do this, then the Egyptians will hear it, "'for by your might you brought these people "'up from among them, "'and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land, "'that they have heard that you, Lord, "'are among these people, "'and that you, Lord, are seen face to face, "'and your cloud stands above them, "'and you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day "'and a pillar of fire by night.

"'Now, if you kill these people as one man, "'then the nations which have heard of your fame "'will speak, saying, "'Because the Lord was not able to bring this people "'to the land which he swore to give them, "'therefore he killed them in the wilderness.

"'And now I pray, let the power of my Lord be great, "'just as you have spoken, saying, "'The Lord is long-suffering and abundant in mercy, "'forgiving iniquity and transgression, "'but he by no means clears the guilty, "'visiting the iniquity of the fathers of the children "'to the third and fourth generation.

"'Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray, "'according to the greatness of your mercy, "'just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt, "'even until now.'". And just to address the things that you guys were saying, I believe God's credibility is still on the line in the sense that if there is no future for Israel, then the promises he made to them in the Old Testament, people will say he took this people for his own namesake, he made all these promises to them, and then he discarded them and started over.

So that's why we still believe there's a future for Israel. I personally believe God's faithfulness and credibility depends on it. Yeah, you had your hand up.

John the Catholic puts it this way, "'Moses, a deceited for Israel, "'protected the Lord's reputation with the Egyptians, "'who charged the Lord with the inability "'to complete his deliverance of Israel "'and thus deny his power.

"'Second, the Lord's loyal love was the basis "'on which the Lord could forgive his people.'".

Okay, thank you.

You know, we talk a lot about faith, that we need to have faith, that we need to be faithful, but what about the faithfulness of God? We need to constantly be talking about the faithfulness of God. So what's Moses doing?

He's reminding God of this covenant promise. He's speaking God's word back to him, reminding God of his promise to the people. So in conclusion, let me encourage you to do the same thing. When you pray to God, remind him of his promises.

Speak God's word back to him. Nothing pleases God more, or few things please God more than for his children to show that they trust in him and his faithfulness. God doesn't want us to end up like the Israelites and gripe and complain, and we just don't see how the promises of God can come to pass.

He delights when we say, Lord, you promised this. I don't understand maybe how it's gonna work out, but this is what you said, and I believe it. I trust in it. So Israel was not utterly destroyed. The rebels were dealt with.

We're gonna see that next week, but we'll close with verses 20 and 21. And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to your word, but truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled.

With the glory of the Lord.

And we believe that will happen in the millennial kingdom when all of the promises of God to Israel will be fulfilled. So God isn't done with them here. He's not done with them yet, even now.