Desert Survival Series Pt 30- Moses the Servant of God — Don Courville

If you'd like to take your Bibles and turn to Numbers, Chapter 20, that will be our main passage as we close down on this series, the next couple of three weeks. Probably the last two weeks have probably been a couple of the most important lessons of the crucified life that we've taught in this series, drawing this to a close.

Today we close, I hope not on a sad note, but on a very serious note of the reality of serving Jesus. Numbers Chapter 20 and verses 7 through 12 are, to me, one of the saddest passages in the whole Bible.

And I've titled this sermon today, The Man of God Who Is Disobedient. That is a scripture used in reference to a prophet, but it applies to Moses at this point. Let's read the passage and then pray. The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes, and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock.

So thou shalt give the congregation and their beast drink. And Moses took the rod from before the Lord as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock. And he said unto them, Here now, ye rebels, must we fetch you water out of this rock?

And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smoked the rock twice. And the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beast also. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believe me not to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.

Let's bow for prayer. Father, you open up our eyes to see this passage, to see the lesson that is there for us, a lesson that has been not learned very well, it seems like, through the generations of time, as we'll see this morning, how many times the same thing has been done by other great men of God, and even by those of us that are not as prominent, or maybe great, as the eyes of the world would say.

Lord, you open up to us to see. Holy Spirit, reveal to us Jesus, reveal to us that which you want us to see, and Lord also, I pray, if there be one here without Christ, that you would open up their eyes to see Jesus as the one who died for them, the one who waits with his arms wide open for them to come.

In Jesus' name, amen. There's a little poem I've given several times, a little short poem, the one about some men dying in battle, remember that one? Some men die in battle, and I added a little phrase, some men die in the desert, and some men die in the flames, and most men die inch by inch as they play silly little games.

But the fact of the matter is, sometime we can die in one moment of disobedience, one moment of passion, we can lose it all. The title of this, The Man of God Who Is Disobedient, is given in 1 Kings 13, about a prophet, a powerful prophet too, and God was using him mightily, but he disobeyed.

He came across an old prophet, and the old prophet lied to him and got him off track, and he was destroyed, a lion ate him up. But I'm not going to get off on that passage, as interesting as it is. But I want to take you through today, I want to take you through this lesson, this is really a lesson probably for preachers, but it's also a lesson for us too, because it applies to the same point.

And the point is this, we can blow it, we can just blow it, as far as our testimony goes. We can make a mistake and just blow it, as far as the Lord being able to use us, or we can, as in the case of Moses, go all the way right up to the edge, and almost get in, and not get in.

And I took the Bible, and I went through, and I dug out some things, how this lesson has been illustrated, and I've just studied it out, and it'll almost break your heart, as you see how some of the men of God just blew it, when they got so close to the crown.

But also, there's the grace of God, that's always right there. And I want, in case I forget to say this, if you do blow it, come back to God. Many times we have to bear our scars, but always come back, always come back.

God's grace is always there. The problem is, many times, because of our pride, we don't want to come back, when we sin and we stumble. You know that I think that there is a healthy fear for us? Now there is a type of fear that is not good.

It's sin. But I think there is a healthy fear, that prods us and prompts us to be careful. I think this type of fear prompted and compelled Paul. It was the fear of failing his Lord. I've got that. It just crushes me when I find out that I've done something wrong.

Does it do that to you? I just hardly can't stand it. But if we're honest, we'll say, I did it. And we'll repent, and we'll learn from it, and we'll go on. But it should crush us to hear that we have done something wrong.

You know what Paul said? He said in 1 Corinthians 9, 27, he said, I keep under my body, I keep my body disciplined very sternly. He said, I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.

I call that the fear of the castaway. He said, I just keep myself disciplined, not to let this old flesh run me. Lest I have preached to others, but in the end, I am a castaway. Boy, that's something, isn't it?

Warnings From Israel’s Wilderness Journey

And he said over in the next chapter, in verse 10, he says, these things, these things that we've been studying in this desert survival series, these things were written for us. Why? He says, these things were our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.

What a lust will do, will take you away from Jesus. It will lust and draw you to it and you will be drawn away from the Lord, maybe for just a moment, maybe for a day, maybe just for an hour. But many times we come back and we say it was not worth it.

It was not worth it to be gone that one minute, that one day, that one hour. It just was not worth it. And he went down through here, how he says, don't be idolaters as some of them were, as it was written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

Neither let us commit fornication, neither let us tempt Christ. He goes into these things, neither murmur. He says, these things happen unto them for examples and they are written for our admonition. We can fail.

We can fail. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. The one that thinks he won't is the one that is in the most danger. The one that thinks he won't do it. Last week, I think it was, wasn't it when we read in the Hebrews, the passage in Hebrews, I think he uses the word fear.

As a matter of fact, he does. We said they could not enter into the land because of unbelief. Then the next verse says, let us therefore fear. Let the promise be left us of entering his wrath. Any of you should seem to come short of.

My goal in this series has been to bring you into the victorious Christian life. I don't know, it may have been that the very message that you missed was the very message you needed. I don't know, but I have learned so much and I have grown so much closer to the Lord through this study that it's just, it's been exciting.

And my burden, I have the same burden that Hutchins Taylor had when he found out how to just live victorious. His burden was to let everybody know and bring everybody into that realm that he had. And that's mine too.

Just to share it with you and to get you into that realm. And this is what Hebrews 4 is talking about. Living victorious day by day and finding that. Now, the passage for today, this lesson for today is a hard one, but I don't think we can pass it up.

We're passing up many good lessons just because of the time wise we could probably be here the rest of our lives in the desert. But we're picking out highlights. In the last two weeks we picked out some of the key highlights and today we're going to pick out a key highlight because they're very memorial in the scriptures.

They're referred to many times. Somebody said this, it's better to die in duty than to live in dishonor. It's better to die in duty than to live in dishonor. That's a pretty good statement because the Christian many times rather than die to self and go ahead and do what the Lord wants us to do.

We don't die to self. We live to self and then we live in dishonor. We just go on. Now, if we don't control our passions, our passions will control us. That's to get it down to, you want some rubber? That's where it is.

If we don't control the flesh, as Paul said, I buffet my body, I discipline my body, it will control us. The flesh would like to go out and go do something else other than get in the Word of God. It just doesn't want to do anything that has to do with spiritual things.

This is why it's a battle. It'd rather go do anything else. It'd rather sleep or go for a drive or go for a swim or just anything, go for a hike, whatever, than get into the Word of God. And maybe when you're having your devotions, there's all kinds of ways to pray, but a good way to pray if you go to sleep all the time is to get out and walk and pray.

I'm going to try to do, I've got a goal that I'm going to start up a new goal to walk seven miles a week, and I'm going to do some of my praying, if I can see during that time, and go through my prayer cards during that time.

You might pray I don't get ran over, because I'm doing that. But the flesh, you've got to get down, lay me down to sleep, you know, you say your prayers, and before you get to sleep, you're already asleep.

You have to watch it. Now, I've got a question for you, then we're going to blast off. Have you ever faced the fact that you can fail your Lord? I live with that. That's a fact, maybe that's a fear, but I can fail Him.

And there is such a thing as fatal failure. I have written up here, under the title of this message, five men that I know personally. The title is the man of God who is disobedient. And all five of these were preachers.

All five of these were preachers. And as far as I know, because two of them I haven't heard of recently, all five of them are out of the ministry. All five of them I know personally. All of these have been within the last ten years.

And then there's a lot of others that I don't know that close. So it is dangerous. I was reading a book, A .W. Tozer, and I don't know where I put it, the notes on it, I wrote it down somewhere, and I'll find them later.

But he says this, that the most hazardous occupation that he knows of is that of the ministry. He says it is the most dangerous occupation he knows of. Not physically, sometimes it can be physically, but spiritually.

So I just want to throw that out to you, just to think that you can fail your Lord. When someday Jesus puts it all together, and He lays out everything, why this happened, why that happened, why I had to go here, why I was supposed to go there, and when He puts my whole life together, and He shows me everything, I don't know about you, but that scares me.

Doesn't it, you? When He'll say, here, you flew it right there. There were 4 ,500 souls that you missed out on because of that disobedience right there. I don't know how it's going to be, but it does cause me to tremble.

The Dangers of Becoming Comfortable in the Desert

Now, the Bible gives us many warnings of the dangers of the desert, and this Desert Survival Series, I am convinced with all my heart, and I'm going to try to put it together and have it in a tape album, will help you survive some things that you're going to face in the future.

You may not be going through these things now, but in the future. The horizon looks pretty dark, you see this morning, it was dark out there, the clouds, and unless we have a revival in America, I'm convinced we're going to see some hard times.

And I'm not alone. I'm not alone. So, we need these things. Some of the dangers of the desert, let me just list a few of these to you. Some of the dangers of the desert, and the desert is the world that we live in, are these.

One is you might get comfortable. You just might get comfortable in this world. You remember Paul? He wrote about demons, and we mentioned him last week, how if you run across him in heaven, and demons, oh, I know about you, you're the guy that left Paul and deserted him.

How embarrassing that would be. But you know why he left him? Paul, he's going through there to Timothy, how tough it was, he said, I fought the fight, and he went through all of that. But then he says, for demons have, he said, come quickly, in verse 9, do thy diligence and come to me quickly.

For demons have forsaken me. Why did you leave them, demons? Having loved this present world. There wasn't an easy chair in the cell with Paul. I wanted to go where there was a TV and air conditioning.

He didn't have anything in that old jail. All he had was rats and smelly sewers. And pneumonia. Having loved this present world. Had a good business offer, whatever. Having loved this present world, and he's departed unto Thessalonica.

He went off. You might get comfortable in leaving. You might get careless. You remember in 1 Timothy 1, how would you like to have the name Imanias and Alexander? What about them? Well, listen, Paul says, these two guys made shipwreck of their faith.

He says, hang on to the faith. Holding on to the faith. And a good conscience, which some have put away concerning faith, and have made shipwreck, of whom is Imanias and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan.

It's real. It's real. And it's very tough. They let Satan work them over. But they got careless. Do you know that if your conscience says something to you, you better listen? Your conscience is your God-given red light.

With the red, and the yellow, and the green. And it works. It's a sensitive little instrument. It works, but you can sort of put some scar tissue over it, or paint over the light so you don't see it. It's not as bright.

Every time it says something to you. Where you become calloused, hard, faded out. You hear the warning blow so many times. Here in this town, you know, this thing goes off, and you just, oh, I wish that thing would quit.

To where you hear it so many times, you don't pay any attention to it. To where one day it was the warning for you. You might get careless. Here's something else. You might lust after something that will destroy you.

Remember David? Just one night of pleasure. And we preach about him all the time for that one night. Now, God ministered to him. But you know what David said? For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing.

My strength faileth because of my sin. Because of the pattern he set that one night, his children followed right down the line through the years, and his grandchildren one time. One time. And it's real.

Not only will you might get comfortable, you might get careless, you might go after a lust. You might quit. You might just get discouraged. I like what Paul said. He said, and he's closing down shop. He's fixing to pack it up and head home to heaven.

And he says, listen. He's writing to Timothy. He says, listen, hang in there. Let me get over here where he said it. 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy 4. He says, I am now ready to be offered. My bags are all packed.

In other words, I haven't got any baggage. I'm ready to go. He says, I am now ready to be offered. At the time of my departure is at hand, I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.

He's saying, I didn't quit. How many times have you wanted to just quit? You say, it's not worth it. Nobody, my neighbors don't listen to me. My relatives don't listen to me. It's just so hard being a Christian.

Who said it'd be easy? Have you counted the cost? Was it ever easy for Jesus? We said, no. Do you know that Jesus told us? He said, it's not going to be easy. But it will be worth it all. This old world is not going to last.

So don't quit. He didn't quit. You might get discouraged. It's Mark. Mark, they were fixing to go into southern Turkey down there. And man, he looked, man, it's bad. There's robbers everywhere they go.

We get stoned. And they wasn't on drugs either, brother. They were real stones. And Mark, he turned tailed and ran back home. Young. Couldn't take it. He got discouraged with the hardness of it. And later on, Paul, he wasn't sure he wanted to take him off on another journey.

And so they had to split up. And one of the other disciples took him. But he got discouraged. But he ended up, he wrote the book of Mark, by the way. Do you know that? He was young when Jesus was around.

But he made the book. He came back. Sure, he quit one day, but he came back. That's the Mark of Mark. We may get knocked down, but we're going to be back. We'll be back. Get your teeth knocked out. You can just gum it out to that guy.

I'll be back. I'm going to go get me some more teeth. You might quit, but don't quit for good. You might fall prey to the enemy. If I took and just read to you every Scripture right now that Paul gave us in this one subject alone, I imagine we could probably just read for a solid hour just the verses with no comment.

We'd almost read, I think, half the New Testament probably. How he warned them about the enemy. 2 Timothy 4, in verse 2 he says, Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, exhort, rebuke with all longsuffering and doctrine.

He says, you hang in there. You stay solid and fundamental because the time is going to come. And I believe maybe it's here. The time is going to come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned into fables.

But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the works of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. He says, the time is going to come when the compromisers are going to be all over the place and you're going to be the fuddy-duddy because you won't compromise truth.

And go along with this thing. Hang in there. Don't fall prey to the enemy. That's another danger in the desert. Here's a seventh one. You might desert your leader. You might desert your leader. Think about this.

Here's Paul. They're standing before all the legions of Satan. The demons are trying to destroy him. The Romans are trying to destroy him. And who's standing there with him? He says in 2 Timothy 4, At my first answer, no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.

It got too hot. I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge, notwithstanding the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. Even if you just have to stand alone with you and Jesus, stand there. Stand there.

The Lord stood with me. I think about Peter. How he deserted his Lord. And I also think about how Jesus came back and restored him. Every time I fall, Jesus is always there with his hand there. Come on, let's get back up.

The devil is there with a stick, ready to beat me down again. Why you dirty crumb. Look at you. You're a preacher and you sin. Or he says that to you. You call yourself a Christian and look, you sin. And Jesus is there.

Come on, let's get back up. Next time you go a little bit farther before you fall, and I'll be there again. And the devil is going to be there with his big stick again. But I think if we remember that whenever I fall, I turn away from my leader.

I turn away from my Savior. Now that's one of the dangers of the desert. Is that we may follow another guide, but the other one wants to destroy us in the desert. One wants to make us like him in the desert.

One wants to destroy us. There's another danger, and that is you might lose sight of your goal. You know, as they were marching around out there in that desert, they lost sight of their goal. They thought God was trying to kill them out there.

No, he wasn't trying to kill them. He's trying to get them to know him. And it was out in the desert that they had that privilege all along without a lot of distractions of the city life. No subway, you know, no buses, no sirens, no horns and stuff.

Out in the desert in the quietness, they just saw God. They saw the pillar of fire and smoke, the mammoth and the water, and God was just there. What a privilege. What are they doing? Belly aching, complaining, because there's a desert.

It's hard out in the desert. You might lose sight of your goal if Ananias and Sapphira got greedy. 1 Timothy 6, 10 is probably one of Paul's most powerful warnings to believers. When he said, For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, you don't even have to get it.

While some coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. I've seen this one many, many times in my short ministry already. Already. Many, many times. Well, now the message.

Moses’s Besetting Sin of Anger

There's one more danger. You might, as in the case of Moses, fall prey to your besetting sin. You see Moses, and I'm not picking on Moses. I'm picking on me and you. There may be one thing that the Spirit of God has been speaking to you about over and over and over again.

And God is saying, You've got to get it or it's going to get you. You've got to get it or it's going to get you. One thing that you've been struggling with, you've been fighting against. You've got to get it.

You see, Moses had a little problem with anger. I made a little study quickly on this. In Exodus 2, 11 and 12, he come out. He saw an Egyptian beating on the Hebrews. Well, he came back and what did he do?

He was mad and he killed that Egyptian. He didn't like that. I think he had a temper. I believe that was his besetting sin. And then he had to run away out into the desert. And the first thing he does when he gets out in the desert, he's sitting down and he watches this girl come up to get some water for her flocks.

And when she's there watering the flocks, some more guys come up and chase her off and sort the water of theirs. And he gets mad. And he goes over there and runs those guys off and waters her flocks. I think he got riled up.

And then not only that, he come over when he faced Pharaoh. Man, Pharaoh got him riled up. And Moses told him what's going to happen. Boy, he turned and walked around. You bet you won't see my face anymore.

It's true. And he walked away. It was over. Man, Pharaoh was going to have it. He was real patient for a long time. But he got mad there. He was angry and he went off. 1620, it says he was wrought with them.

The mammoth came down and they were murmuring around. It says that Moses was angry with them. I just went down through here over and over again. You remember the golden calf? He come down there. He had the Ten Commandments in his hand.

He come down. He saw what they were doing. And it says he threw the commandments down and he broke them. He took that golden calf. He got it. He ground it up into powder. He threw the powder all on the water.

And he make them all drink it up. He was mad. You know what Aaron said? Moses said, Aaron, what did they do to you? And Aaron come back and he said, calm down, Moses, calm down. That's what happened in the Scriptures.

It's right there. He said, calm down. Everybody was scared probably. But he just had a nature like us. He was a man. He's just like you and I. Moses was a man. He was a very meek man also. Because when Moses was holed as cool, and he did it most of the time, but it'd come out sometimes, God would come in and blast away.

Between God and Moses, those people had it. For this whole study, it's been the same thing over and over again. They'd just murmur and complain. God would come in and do something. Great! Praise the Lord!

Have a little hard time, murmur and complain. God would come in and sometimes He'd work on them a little bit. Sometimes He wouldn't. It all depended on the circumstances. But it just seemed like a broken record over and over again.

And it came down to numbers, 1610. They were murmuring over the manor again. And Korah, he rebels. Korah says, you're taking too much upon you, Moses. You've bit off more than you can chew. We can handle it too.

God's going to use us too. And Moses, he comes out and says, no, Korah, you have bit off more than you can chew. And he was mad. Scripture says, he was angry. And Moses was very rough with him. I think he had a little problem with that.

Now, I'm not accusing him. Because I've got my areas. And you've got yours. They came up last week. We saw how they come up to the land. Last week we saw they come up to Kadesh Barnea. And they would not go in.

They couldn't be persuaded to go in. Until God says, you can't go in now. And then they tried to go in on their own. And they got beat. And because of that, they went out and they wandered in the desert for what?

40 years. And now that brings us up to where we're at today. It's going to be a short point. So if you go to sleep, you'll miss it. Here they are. They've wandered around out in that desert for another 40 years.

While all the deadbeat unbelievers died off. And they've come back to Kadesh Barnea again. They're back ready to go into the land. And you know what happens? There's no water. No water. Broken record.

It says that they were complaining. Complaining again. 40 years. This is the generation now that has grown up. This is the generation that's going to go into the land. These guys were 20 years and younger.

Back 40 years ago. All the moms and pops and grandmas and grandpas have died off. And now they come along and they say the same thing that they had heard all their lives too. They say, you brought us out here to kill us.

You know, it would have been better for us to die back in Egypt and all this stuff. And here goes Moses. Tearing into the presence of God. What are we going to do? And here's what God says. He says, I want you to take the rod, number one.

Take that rod. Number two, you gather the assembly together. Thou and Aaron and thy brother. And three, you take the rod there and you speak to the rock and water will come out. And what Moses do? He took the rod.

He gathered the people and the people come out there. And he says, here's his words. Here are now your rebels. Must we fetch you water out of the rock? And he took the rod and he beat the rock. He was mad.

Moses lifted up his hand and with his rod, he smoked the rock twice. And because of that one moment of anger, what was it that God would not let Moses do? He wouldn't let him into the promised land. Do you realize that that had been Moses' dream to get out of Egypt and into the promised land?

He had made it through the basket in the river. He had made it through the years in Pharaoh's court without being polluted socially, politically, whatever. He made it through the desert by dying to self.

And in one moment of passion, he forgot to die to self. Which is what the Christian life is. A continual series of just dying to self and sin. That's where the victory is. Just die to it. Sin comes, I'm dead to it.

I don't have to do it. Anger comes, I have to die. I just die to it. I don't have to be angry. Lust comes, I don't have to look. Just dying to self. Jesus comes and lives in our lives every time. But that one moment, he had made it through all that.

He made it through the burning bush, his resurrection. He made it through all the ten plagues. He made it through the sea, the Red Sea. He made it through the experiences of no water, no food. And where they met the enemy and he held the rod up.

And when they let it down, they were defeated. He made it through that. He made it through the giving of the law and the golden calf. And he made it through rejection by his friends, rejection by his family, rejection by all of the up-and-up leaders in the camp.

He made it through all of that. The national leaders were against him and everything. But all of a sudden, he made one mistake that God would not overlook. Now, why was it so serious? All he did was hit a rock with a stick.

The Rock, Christ, and the Call to Die to Self

Here's why it was so serious. And here's why God would not let Moses into the land. Even though Moses, for 80 years, had lived in that wilderness. For 80 years, he had walked and marched and led all those crybabies.

But God said, no, you can't come in. Why was it so serious? You know why. Because the rock had already been smoked once. That spoke of the death of Christ, the crucifixion of Christ. And after the crucifixion of Christ, we do not crucify Christ afresh again.

All we do is speak to him. Christ is only crucified once. And Moses, Moses blew it. He just did. And the lesson for you and me is, we can blow it. I can go out today and do one thing that will ruin my ministry, that would ruin this church, that would ruin my testimony, ruin my family, ruin you.

You realize that? You can do it too. We can do it. Take heed. Take heed. The Bible says, take heed lest you fall. Take heed lest you think you stand and you don't. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

And Moses fell in a moment of weakness to die to self. That's it. He just forgot. He got angered again. Do you know that God was not angry? God wasn't angry. God just threw out and gave him the water.

God wanted them to see the gracious provision that he had for them. And he said, why did you blow my glory? I wanted to show them my glory. Well, God gave him water anyway, but they didn't see the glory of just speaking and having their needs met.

And we have the doctrine of the mass that entered in because of this, which is the re-crucifixion of Christ. The reslaying of Christ happens thousands of times every day. Christ is not to be crucified afresh.

Well, he lost it all. But God's grace was seen. Remember David? God restored him. You remember Peter? God restored him. And poor old Paul, trying to do his best. God saved him, gave him a ministry, even after he killed all those Christians.

And Moses, what about Moses? Did he get in the land? Now, the Bible says that God took him up on a mountain and buried him. Did he get in the land? Let me tell you something. Moses has already been in the land.

He got into the land when Jesus was there. You remember the time of transfiguration? One day Moses was standing there with Elijah and Jesus. And Jesus had taken some of his disciples. And they were there.

And there was Moses with them. He finally got into the land. He had to wait a while. You know what they were talking about when Moses finally got into the land? You know what they were talking about? They were talking about the death of Christ.

This was before Christ died. They were talking about his death. I just wonder if they were also talking about that day, back many years ago, when Moses fell to the Lord. He said, Lord, thank you for letting me put my feet down here now.

I remember that day when I fell to die to self. And Jesus, I just wonder if he says, yes, but talking about dying to self. I've got a death that's coming. It's a cross. I'm going to go die there for the sins of the world.