A Rebellious Generation, Part 1 (Hebrews 3:7-11)

The Authority of Hebrews and the Call to Read the Old Testament

Turn now, if you will, to the book of Hebrews, to chapter three. Hebrews chapter three, we're gonna read together verses seven through 11. Actually, let's read together verses seven through verse 15. Hebrews chapter three, verse seven.

Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried me by testing me and saw my works for 40 years.

Therefore, I was angry with this generation and said, they always go astray in their heart, and they did not know my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.

But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance, firm until the end.

While it is said today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart as when they provoked me. Let's pray together. Our Father, we pray that as we open your word and read it and study it and hear it preached, that we would hear your voice in the pages of scripture.

Just as you spoke to your people in ages past, you speak to us today through the written word. For it is our confidence that when your word is rightly preached and understood, that your voice is truly heard.

So grant today that we may hear that and that we may respond appropriately. We pray that you would sanctify us, your people through your word and be glorified in our time, our meditation and the inclinations of our hearts.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen. I do hope that the Old Testament is part of your daily systematic Bible reading and not just a part of it, as in a verse here or a proverb there, but I mean a large part of your daily systematic Bible reading.

First of all, if you don't have a daily systematic Bible reading, start there. And then make sure that as you are planning and purposing what's going to take place over the course of a year, that you divide up that Bible reading roughly how scripture is divided up, maybe two thirds of it in the Old Testament and a third of it in the New Testament.

And that would be appropriate and sort of divided up how scripture is divided up for us. I don't think as Christians, we should ever be without God's word continually being taken in by us and understood and studied by us.

And we certainly should not neglect the Old Testament. If you know me, then you know I have advocated in years past that everybody should have a daily systematic Bible reading and that it should be our goal.

And I know this might be ambitious for some people, but it should be our goal. And I would encourage you in this to read through the Bible once a year. Sounds daunting. It's not that daunting when you kind of break it down and just sort of discipline yourself to do it.

I think it is the single greatest spiritual discipline I have ever adopted in my life is reading through the Bible once a year. Started in 1996 and I haven't missed a year since 1996. And I would never go back and alter my plan or alter that commitment that I made.

And I put that out there not as a sort of, I'm greater than you, but as an encouragement to you. Look, if I can do that, you can do that through the Bible once a year. I think that that is a reasonable goal that we should have.

And in doing so, then we won't neglect the Old Testament. Now I know that there are Christians who would have an objection to reading through the Old Testament. Some of them would say, look, I'm really, I'm a New Testament Christian.

I know the Old Testament was for the Jews. I'm a New Testament Christian. So I focus on the New Testament. You know what New Testament Christians never said? New Testament Christians never said, I am a New Testament Christian.

Because there were Christians before there was a New Testament. And so for the New Testament Christians, the only Bible they had was the Old Testament. And that was what they read. That was what they preached.

That was what they memorized. That was what they bathed themselves in. In their minds, they never said, oh, Christ is risen from the dead. Therefore I can jettison the Old Testament and I'm just gonna be a New Testament Christian.

That is something that the Christians of the New Testament never would have ever thought or ever said. It would have never entered their mind to think in those terms. Never would have. For them, the Old Testament was their bread and butter.

It took between 10 and 40 years for the New Testament scriptures to be written. What do you think that they read during that time? The Daily Bread, Days of Praise, Highlights Magazine? No, they had the Old Testament.

And that was what they used for their devotional, for their preaching and the teaching, the life of their church. And of course, as the New Testament was written, they would incorporate the readings of the apostles and appropriately so into their Bible reading and into their church life.

Another objection is I just really want to focus in my Bible reading on Jesus. I really wanna know Jesus. And once I know my New Testament and I really know Jesus, then I'll open it up and start reading more in the Old Testament.

Well, if that's your desire, then I have some good news for you. Jesus said the Old Testament was all about him. So if you really want to know Jesus, you are going to need to know your Old Testament. You have to, because Jesus said in John chapter five, you read Moses and you think that in Moses, you have eternal life.

Moses wrote about me. And if you listen to Moses, you would believe in me, but you don't listen to Moses and therefore you don't believe in me. After his resurrection with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, what did he do?

He started in Moses and being in Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them in the scriptures, the things concerning himself, a tour of the Old Testament. That was the basis of it. And so if you want to know Jesus, then you have to know your Old Testament.

And Christians who say, I'm gonna know Jesus, but I don't have any time for the Old Testament, either display their ignorance or their insincerity. One of the two. The New Testament teaches us to value the Old Testament.

We cannot neglect the Old Testament. The Old Testament is inspired scripture just as well as the New Testament is inspired scripture. Is all of it as interesting as the New Testament? No, the genealogies are not that interesting, but I read them every year.

11 chapters, first Chronicles, 11 chapters of genealogy. Is it as interesting as reading Romans or first Thessalonians or first Timothy or Hebrews? No, it's not necessarily, but it is inspired scripture.

And listen, scripture doesn't lose its inspiration like the wax job on your car over a period of time. It doesn't begin to sort of fade out. It is inspired on the same level as the New Testament. And we neglect the state and the health of our own soul when we neglect the Old Testament.

The Old Testament was scripture for the apostles. They found value in it. I think it is arrogant for us to say, well, it was good enough for the apostles, but it's not good enough for me. Or yeah, they could find value in it, but I can't find any value in it.

Yeah, it was good for them, good for the early church, but I've sort of graduated beyond the Old Testament in my own spiritual life. I'm a New Testament Christian. That is just such an arrogant, such an arrogant perspective.

And we cannot fall into that trap. First Corinthians verse 10, chapter 10, verse six, which we read at the beginning of our worship service this morning, says these things, and referring to the Old Testament scriptures and the things concerning the children of Israel and the wilderness, Paul said, these things happened as examples for us so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.

And what was Paul doing? He was pointing to an Old Testament example. He's saying, look, this is for you. Read this and understand and learn this lesson. There's a movement. I shouldn't say it's a movement.

It's actually a controversy at the point right now surrounding Andy Stanley and some comments that he made in his church in Atlanta, Georgia. Andy Stanley is one of probably the 10 most influential pastors in all of America.

He has a mega church in Atlanta, Georgia and several large campuses around the country, and not just in the United States, but also sort of satellites in even up in Canada that I know of. And Andy Stanley made headlines recently when in one of his sermons, he said, among other things, that as Christians, we need to unhitch our Christianity from the Old Testament.

We need to unhitch. You know what that means? It means unhitch and let the Old Testament go. And his argument basically was in the Old Testament, there are all of these things which are difficult to understand, difficult to explain and difficult for us with our modern sensibilities to embrace.

The killing of the Canaanites in the land of Israel and God commanding that, and all of those statements about homosexuality and the moral code. And he actually goes so far as to say, we need to disconnect all of the moral obligations of the church from anything that we find in the Old Testament.

That is false teaching. And I can tell you where that is gonna go because this is not the first time that that's come up in the history of Christianity. There was an early church heresy named Marcion who taught a similar thing about the Old Testament.

And I can tell you where it went in Marcion's day, I can tell you where it's gonna go in our day. I'll tell you what the next step is within five years, if this catches on and people begin to do this and take this advice of his, I'll tell you where it's gonna go.

Because the very next step is all of those moral requirements of the Old Testament where homosexuality is an abomination, those really aren't for us. We need to disconnect, unhitch our New Testament moral code from the Old Testament, the difficult Old Testament moral code of the Old Testament.

See, that's where that's gonna go. It does not bode well, that is false teaching. Unhitch our Christianity from the Old Testament. Aren't you glad the author of Hebrews didn't think that way? How much of Hebrews would you have if the author of Hebrews thought you needed to unhitch Christianity from the Old Testament?

I let you guess, it's a really small number, really small amount of Hebrews you would have. You know what you'd have? Zero. He would have never written the book because Hebrews is an exposition of Old Testament texts.

Continually, the author of Hebrews appeals to the Old Testament. The Old Testament examples, the Old Testament warnings, the Old Testament promises, the Old Testament Psalms, he appeals to the Old Testament understanding of who Christ is and of a high priest and what was done and what God expected is constantly appealing to the Old Testament.

The polar opposite of what we should do is to unhitch our New Testament Christianity from the Old Testament. Does that mean that everything written in the Old Testament is necessarily for us to incorporate and implement today?

No, not necessarily, but our Christianity is the fulfillment of that. So we need to read it and understand it and interpret it rightly, certainly not unhitch our modern Christian church from the Old Testament.

The Wilderness Generation in Numbers 13–14

The author of Hebrews in chapter three, verses seven through 11, you will notice he is quoting from a passage there. He's quoting from Psalm 95. Now, Psalm 95 is an allusion to something else back in Hebrews chapter 13 and 14.

So in the passage of Hebrews three, verses seven through 11, we have references to three other Old Testament passages, Psalm 95 and two chapters in numbers. So three entire chapters. What we're going to do today is we're going to leave Hebrews three for a little, well, I was gonna say a little bit, but it's not gonna be a little bit.

It's gonna be almost the entire message. We're gonna leave Hebrews three and we're going to back up to Psalm 95. Actually, we're gonna skip Psalm 95. So don't start turning there yet. We have to go back to what Psalm 95 was referring to, which was Numbers chapter 13 and 14.

So turn in your Bibles, back to the book of Numbers chapter 13 and 14. Now, if you're one of those Christians who has detached your Old Testament from your New Testament Christianity, then Numbers comes after Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus.

So if you start at the beginning, start flipping to the right, you will eventually come to the book of Numbers chapter 13. And actually to get some context, we're gonna be jumping back to the end of chapter 10.

So go back to Numbers chapter 10. Yeah, I know this just gets better and better, doesn't it? You keep laughing. The author of Hebrews could assume familiarity with his audience. He could assume their familiarity with this event.

This event for the nation of Israel marked their history and marked them as a people, the way that George Washington's crossing of Valley Forge marks us, or Thomas Jefferson signing the Declaration of Independence marks us.

It is a massive key historical event in the life and history of the nation of Israel that explains so much. They learned so many lessons. Every Jewish boy was as familiar with this as you are with the back of your hand.

They understood it. Forwards and backwards, they got this passage. The author of Hebrews, because his audience was Jewish, he could assume that kind of familiarity. I cannot assume that kind of familiarity with my audience here.

I can assume it with a lot of people here, but not this entire audience. So thus we need to jump back into that passage and kind of get an understanding of that. There's a second reason we're going back here rather than just moving forward in Hebrews chapter three.

The second reason is because you remember in Hebrews chapter three, it's a warning passage. And what is it warning about? It's warning about the danger of falling away and unbelief, hard-heartedness and rebellion.

And it is the passage of the people who believe you can lose your salvation, often quote, in order to prove that you can lose your salvation. You can once be saved and then be lost. And we talked about this last week.

Well, if we're going to deal with that warning passage, then we need to back up and make sure that we understand the details of it. We can't just assume that we understand the background of it and kind of plow forward.

We want to understand it the way that they would have understood it and get all those details. So we gotta go back into that and make sure that we are rightly understanding this incident that he is alluding to in Hebrews chapter three.

So we are in, where did we end up? Numbers chapter 10, I guess is where we're at. Numbers chapter 10. Let me set up the context for you a little bit. Do you understand the historical context of this? God had promised to Abraham when he called him out of idolatry and in Ur of the Chaldeans, he had promised to Abraham a land.

Abraham never saw that land. He walked through it, but he never took possession of it himself. And neither did Abraham's son, Isaac, or Isaac's son, Jacob, or Jacob's 12 sons that were born to him. They all went into the land of Egypt.

And in Egypt, they became a great nation over the course of about 400 years. So you have several centuries that take place between even God's promise to Abraham and the time that the children of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, were called out of Egypt.

So then while they were in Egypt and God used Egypt to preserve them from a famine, to bring them all together, to give them a land of plenty, they became a healthy and robust people until a Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph.

And that Pharaoh enslaved the children of Israel and used them as his own slave labor force. And then we start at the beginning of the book of Exodus. And you remember that God called Moses to bring the children of Israel out of Exodus.

And so Moses, after spending 40 years in the wilderness, tending sheep, was called back to go back into the land of Egypt and say to Pharaoh, let my people go so that they may go out into the wilderness and sacrifice to me and worship me.

And so Moses did that. He went to Pharaoh and he said, let my people go, let's say it the Yahweh, let my people go so that they can come out into the wilderness and sacrifice to me and worship me. And Pharaoh said, no, I'm not gonna do that.

And then Moses said, then prepare to meet my God. And what followed was 10 plagues on the nation of Egypt. And periodically through there, it would say that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and then Pharaoh hardened his own heart in unbelief.

And then Pharaoh would say, okay, I'll let him go. And then he would change his mind and not let them go. And the plagues continued. And each of those plagues, all 10 of the plagues on Egypt were all plagues that were allusions to Egyptian gods, the gods of rain, the gods of hail, the gods of the crop, the God of the firstborn, the God of the frogs and the God of the locusts and all these different pagan deities in the land of Egypt.

And it is as if God had taken various ones of these pagan deities and said, okay, I'm gonna show you just how useless your God is. I'm gonna take something that he is the God of and I'm gonna use it to judge you.

And that's what he did. Eventually Pharaoh said, get out, leave. After all the firstborn had died. And we read that sometimes and we fail to make the connection of just how devastating all of those plagues would have been on the land of Egypt.

Can you imagine that devastation? The entire crop with the locusts and the hail, all of our agriculture would have been wiped out for that entire year, that entire season, destroyed. And the cattle, destroyed.

And no water in the land. And the amount of people that would have died from that. And then all the firstborn people. And then it says that God worked in the heart of the Egyptians so that as the Israelis left Egypt, they asked the Egyptians for articles of gold and silver.

And the Egyptians said, sure. And they gave them to them. And Israel left Egypt and plundered all the wealth of Egypt. And then went out into the desert and Pharaoh pursued them and his entire army was drowned in the Red Sea.

So all of their agriculture, all of their economy, all of the firstborn, all of their wealth and all of their military might of a superpower at the time, utterly and completely destroyed. And all the children of Israel had watched all of that happen.

They saw what happens when someone disobeys Yahweh. They saw what happens when someone does not believe the word of Yahweh. They witnessed what happens when you disobey and your heart is hardened, like Pharaoh's heart was hardened and they observed all of this.

And they saw the mighty power, the outstretched hand, the miracles, the signs, the wonders. They heard the word of God. They witnessed all of that. They got to see what happens when someone says no to Yahweh and disobeys him, that their heart is hardened and that he will harden their hearts and that he will judge them for their unfaithfulness and their disobedience.

These people were eyewitnesses to all of that. Okay, that's the background. Now chapter 10, verse 33, actually verse 29. We are to, now after the Exodus and the children come through and the Egypt has been drowned, we're gonna fast forward two years and two months.

Then Moses said to Hobab, the son of Reuel, the Midianite, Moses' father-in-law, we're setting out to the place of which the Lord said, I will give it to you. What is he referring to? The promised land, what God said to Abraham.

Moses said, it's time to leave. God promised to Abraham a land. We're going to go take possession of it. That's where we're headed. I will give it to you. Come with us and we will do for you, good for you, good.

For the Lord has promised good concerning Israel. Notice Moses' confidence. God has said, I will do this, God's gonna do this. He's brought us through all of this. Moses has witnessed it. He's been a front row spectator for all of these signs and wonders.

God has promised this. The time is now, he has commanded us to go. And in that two years and two months, since they came out of the land of Egypt, they had met with God at Mount Sinai. They had seen the flashes of lightning and the smoke.

They had been provided water out of a rock. They had been provided manna from heaven. Their shoes and their clothes have not worn out. They have spent those two years and two months creating all of the temple tabernacle material and the furniture and the tabernacle itself.

And they have installed and instituted the priesthood. They are already people ready to walk in and take possession of the good promise that God has given to them and to do so in obedience to his command and to enjoy as a result of that, all of the goodness that would come to them for simply obeying what God has said.

So verse 31 or verse 30 of chapter 10. But he said to him, I will not come, but rather go to my own land and my relatives. Then he said, please do not leave us. And as much as you know where we should camp in the wilderness and you will be as eyes for us.

And so it will be for you. You go with us that whatever good the Lord does for us, we will do for you. Thus they set out from the Mount of the Lord, three days journey with the ark of the covenant of the Lord journeying in front of them for the three days to seek out a resting place for them.

Now notice the word rest. They were going to a resting place. God had promised them a land where they could rest. They've been out in the wilderness two years and two months. We're going to the place where God has said, here you can rest.

Now, in those three days journey and between them starting off here and reaching the land, the border to the land of Israel. And they were ready to take possession of that. The children of Israel were complaining.

They were a grumbling people. And you see them complain about their adversity in 11 verse one. Now the people became like those who complain of adversity in the hearing of the Lord. Things are tough, things are hard.

They begin to grumble and complain. You see them complain about the manna in chapter 11 verse six but now our appetite is gone. There's nothing at all to look at except this manna. Even the food that God had graciously provided for them.

They're complaining about that. And then in chapter 12 verse two and verse one, we see that Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because the Cushite woman whom he had married. And they said, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses?

Has he not spoken through us as well? And the Lord heard it and God judged them for that. So there is rebellion and there is bickering and there is complaining. And then we come to chapter 13. Here's where we're gonna get an overview.

Chapter 13 and 14. 13 verse one. Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, send out for yourselves men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan which I am going to give to the sons of Israel. You shall send a man from each of their father's tribes, every one a leader among them.

So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command of the Lord. All of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel. Verses four through 16, kind of list those men and the tribes that they came from and the family line that they came from.

There were 12 men, one for each of the tribes. They were leaders of their families, leaders of the tribes to go into the promised land and spy it out, search it out. And why did God do that? Did God not know what was in the land?

Was he anxiously waiting for 40 days back with Moses and the people? I can't wait to hear what the land is like, what they bring back. I wonder if there are grapes there. I wonder if the people are strong or mighty.

Why did God send them in at all? He could have just said, okay, it's here. It's time now, we're gonna go in. We're gonna go in blind. You're just gonna have to trust me. We're gonna go in blind. Just gonna cross the Jordan River and we will burn whatever bridges we encounter when we get to those bridges.

He could have said that, but he didn't. The Lord said, send men in to go in and to spy it out and come back and give a report. God did not need to find out what was in the land. He knew, why did he send them in?

This is a test. That's what this is. If I give them this information, having promised them all of these good things, will they trust me when they find out what they're up against? They've complained about all of the adversity up to this point.

When they see the potential adversity ahead of them, will they decide to go in or will they bail and want to leave? Are they willing to trust me in the face of that unknown and that difficulty? That's the issue.

Now, God knew what the answer was going to be. Again, it's not as if he is wondering what are they gonna do once they find out. He knows what they're gonna do once they find out. What is God about to do?

He is about to expose to everybody else the true condition of the hearts of everyone in the nation of Israel. That's what he was doing. All this was about. We have a bunch of pagan unbelievers who do not trust God, who are walking in rebellion and unbelief, hard-hearted men and women, who since the day that they crossed the Red Sea have been complaining about every little thing the whole way through.

They have tested God. They have tried him. They have bickered about his provision. They have complained about everything that God has given to them. Now, it brings them all the way up to the promised land, and here's the test.

He is going to reveal to them and to everyone the condition of the hearts of these people. He's gonna put it on full display. That's what this is all about. Put all of that on full display so that he can judge their hard-heartedness and their unbelief.

Verse 21, so they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob and Lebo Hamath. Now, these are not places in Philadelphia or Illinois, so I don't know how to pronounce these names.

So if you have a different pronunciation in your mind, it's probably as wrong as the one that's in my mind that you're about to hear. Verse 22, when they had gone up into the Negev, they came to Hebron, where Ahimon, Shishai, and Talmai, the descendants of Enoch were.

Now, Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. Then they came to the Valley of Eshkol, and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between the two men with some of the pomegranates and the, I know it's not pomegranates.

It's pomegranates, and the figs. That place was called the Valley of Eshkol because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut down from there. When they returned from spying out the land at the end of 40 days, they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh.

And they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Look, we have one single cluster of grapes, and this thing is so big that we put it on a pole to carry it between two people.

This is what's on the other side of the Jordan River. Verse 27, thus they told him and said, we went into the land where you sent us, and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.

Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large, and moreover, we saw the descendants of Enoch there. Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.

Verse 30, then Caleb quieted the people. That's interesting detail. Caleb had to quiet the people. Why do you think he had to quiet the people? Because when they heard that report ending in verse 29, there must've been an uproar, some sort of discussion amongst the people, this is not good.

So even though Moses doesn't say, they were complaining and talking and murmuring amongst themselves, Caleb had to quiet the people because this was not a good report. This was not what the people wanted to hear.

Verse 30, Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, we should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it. But the men who had gone up with him said, we're not able to go up against the people, they're too strong for us.

So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out saying, the land through which we have gone in spying it out is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.

The Jews are not a big people. You ever notice this? I noticed this when I was in Israel almost two years ago. I am a giant among Jews and I mean giant, I might as well be called Goliath. Walking amongst the Jewish people, I bought a jacket in one store in downtown Jerusalem and I tried on a military jacket and it was too small for me, it was only extra large.

I said, you have an extra, extra large. And he said, we don't have anybody in the military that's an extra, extra large. He said, we don't have anybody in the military that is as big as you. And then he said to me in this Jewish accent, I don't know if you have noticed, but Americans are way bigger than us Jewish people.

And that was true. And I looked down at him and said, yeah, you're probably right, that is true. So anybody to a Jew would seem like a giant. And there are probably these massive physical specimens in the land of Israel.

Verse 30, there also we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anakaz are part of the Nephilim and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight and so we were in their sight. They looked down on us, we were small in their sight and then we realized how small we really are.

Now when a bunch of small people or short people are all together, they all feel tall, right? Unless I need to read something on the top shelf, but you get a bunch of short people around and they don't really feel small or notice their smallness until someone steps in who's six feet three inches tall and bigger than them and then suddenly they realize, wow, we really are small.

When they stepped into the land of Israel, they were surrounded by people who were all taller than them for two years and two months. All they had seen was themselves and that was normal. And suddenly they realized we're not normal, we're small.

That must be normal, these people are enormous. We can't possibly go in and spy out this land or take this land. Verse 14 or chapter 14, then all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried and the people wept that night.

And were they weeping over? Well, you're about to find out. Verse two, all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation said to them, would that we had died in the land of Egypt.

Oh, would that we had 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 plunder. Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?

So they said to one another, let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt. They wanted to go back to slavery rather than walking into the land of that God had promised them. And what they were not understanding was that if God says, I will give this to you, he will give it to you, he will give it to you.

There's no possibility that this cannot happen. Well, you and I today, we look forward to a time when we believe that God is going to give to us the kingdom. That someday all the nations of the world will belong to our Messiah and he will hand it all to us and say, you get to share in this inheritance.

This is my inheritance. The nations and the stars, it is all mine and you get to have it, now it is yours. We've been granted something far greater than what the children of Israel were promised. And they walked away from it because they did not believe that ultimately God really would keep his word and give to them the good thing that he had promised.

Verse five, then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in the presence of all the assembly of the congregation of his sons of Israel. Joshua, the son of Nun and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes.

Now, if we had read the part at the beginning of chapter 13 where it lists the men, we would have seen Joshua and Caleb listed there. Now, both of them come back in. Remember, Caleb said, as Caleb says in verse 30 of chapter 13, he quieted the people and said, we should by all means go up and take possession of the land.

We will surely overcome it. He knew that if God is for us, nobody can be against us. As tall, as mighty, as fortified as they are, it's nothing. Our God can overcome that. So we will take it, we must surely.

He will give it, he will fulfill his word. Joshua was there with Caleb making the same case. We find out in chapter 14, verse six, Joshua, the son of Nun is there and Caleb, they spied out the land, they tore their clothes.

They spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel saying, the land which we pass through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord is pleased with 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. Do not fear the people of the land. They will be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. But all the congregation said to stone them with stones.

Then the glory of the Lord appeared in the town of meeting to all the sons of Israel. Now they're about ready to stone with stones the only two men other than Moses, possibly Aaron, the only two men in all of the land of Israel with faith.