FBC Daily Devotional – May 18, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:06

Well, a good Tuesday to you. I trust all is going well with your week thus far, and you're seeing the

00:13

Lord bless in your labors, your efforts for Him, even in the last 24 hours as the week has gotten underway.

00:21

Well, Numbers chapter 14, one of our passages for reading today, is really, really one of the most tragic passages in all of the account of the

00:34

Exodus from the departure of Egypt until the children of Israel actually get into the promised land and begin to conquer that land.

00:43

It's so tragic because here they are right, right on the border, right on the edge of going into this land that God's promised.

00:54

It's a wonderful land flowing with milk and honey and abundant provision and all the rest of that.

01:01

And Moses sends in these spies, these dozen spies, to go throughout the land to get an idea of what the land is like and you know, where the inhabitants are and what the produce of the land is like and so on and so forth.

01:13

And these 12 spies come back and you're probably very familiar with the story, and ten of them give a bad report of the land.

01:22

It's not of the land, but their evil report, their bad report, is that we can't take it.

01:28

They come back and they say, you know, the land is, it's a good land. There's a lot of, you know, it's very fertile, you know, abundant, abundant produce and all the rest of that stuff.

01:38

And there's cities and villages and it's a wonderful, a wonderful land. It is flowing with milk and honey, but there's all these big people there and there's all these terrible, you know, difficult foes that we just would never be able to conquer them.

01:55

We can't, we can't handle it. We can't do this, they affirm. And, you know,

02:02

Joshua and Caleb, of course, they give the minority report. They say, no, this is, don't listen to that. We can, because God's promised this, promised us this.

02:11

Well, you know, with this one thing, a few things have come out in this whole passage, and one of them is that, is the truth, the principle that it's a whole lot easier to go along with a majority report, even if it's a majority report of unbelief or distrust and discouragement.

02:30

It's much easier to do that than to listen to and heed the minority report of faith, a report that compels us to trust in the

02:42

Lord, to count on his promises and to put our confidence in him. Yeah, the majority report says, you know, our confidence is in ourselves.

02:52

What God says really depends on what we can do and our ability. It's, you know, the promise is really dependent upon us, not upon God.

03:03

Minority report says, no, no, we trust in the Lord. We trust in God. And it's easier, it's much easier to go along with the majority, go along with the crowd.

03:13

It always is. But which way I go will have some huge implications for tomorrow.

03:21

And that certainly comes out in this passage, doesn't it? The people, they don't want to hear it, and they're disbelieving.

03:30

And Joshua and Caleb, they get up in verses 5 to 10 of chapter 14, they try to still the crowd and say, wait, you know, calm down, listen, we can do this.

03:38

We can do this. We just need to put our trust in the Lord. Yeah, it's, yeah, the the

03:44

Anicam there are there, the big people are there. But look at what God's promised and look what God has provided.

03:50

Look at this produce that comes from the land. We can do this. We can do this by God's grace and by his help.

03:59

Another idea that comes out here is that when the crowd is, you attempt to dissuade the crowd with with faith to hold on to God's promises and to put your trust in God's promises, and the crowd doesn't want to hear that.

04:17

It only makes them angry. And so what they end up doing here in this passage, it says the congregation said to stone them with stones.

04:27

Why? Because they're trying to get people to trust in the Lord. Yeah, one way to one way to raise the hostility of the mob is to go against the the narrative that that they're holding on to, that they're believing, even if even if that mob is supposed to be

04:46

God's people, and they're listening to a report. They're listening to messages that will turn them away from God's promises.

04:55

Yeah, you try to get them to turn around and you can find yourself on the receiving end of a baseball bat, figuratively speaking.

05:05

Well, the Lord, of course, comes to Moses and says to Moses, you know, I'm gonna, these people aren't gonna enter the land.

05:12

They're gonna die in the wilderness and Moses turns around and gives that report to this mob of people who's this million people, couple million people who said that we can't go in and take the land.

05:24

He gives them this report, said all of you who have been unbelievers and you're 20 years of age and upward, you're you're gonna perish in this wilderness.

05:33

You're gonna wander for the next 38 years until this generation has died. Only Joshua and Caleb are going to enter that land and everyone under age 20.

05:43

Well, now the people say, oh, well, you know, what, you know, we can do it.

05:48

We need to go do this. All right, you know, God said to do it. All right. Now we're gonna go do it. All right. Now look, look. Repentance, after the punishment has been decreed, the consequence for the sin has been declared.

06:05

Repentance, so -called, after that and obedience after the consequence has been prepared doesn't, doesn't eliminate the consequence.

06:17

It's still going to be reaped. In fact, at the end of this chapter, the people try to say, well, okay, we're gonna go conquer the land.

06:26

We're gonna go conquer the land after God said, no, you're not. And they end up, they end up suffering greatly for it.

06:36

Now look, when the consequence has been declared and it starts to be meted out,

06:46

I just need to humbly yield to the lash and not, not try to squirm out of it by a feigned, feigned obedience.

06:58

It's really just unbelief. This is another expression of unbelief, another expression of rebellion against the

07:05

Lord. So there's a, there's a ton of challenging material in this whole account of Numbers chapters 13 and 14, and, and I trust that God will challenge us with it.

07:20

So, for the remainder of this day, I hope that this, this, this lesson will carry, carry you through to remind you to trust in the promises of God, even when it seems hard, even when it seems difficult.

07:35

Trust in him, and let's do the right thing. Our Father and our God, I pray that we would not be like the

07:42

Israel of old, disbelieving you, wanting to go our own way, deciding that we know better.

07:49

All these things, Father, just lead us to misery and heartache and failure. Deliver us from this, we pray, and we ask this in Jesus' name.

07:58

Amen. All right, well, have a good rest of your Tuesday, and I trust that the