Transcription
Hello everyone. This is Mike Howard and I am here with Beverly Howard. We're going to do a Bible study. We're in our fourth lesson in the book of Numbers. Today we're going to take a look at Numbers chapter 14. The focal verses are 11-24, but I'm going to cover a number of other verses. The subtitle of the lesson is "Do Not Harden Your Heart," but the real title is "Rebellion and Judgment." This is part two of a two-part lesson that we began last week in Numbers chapter 13.
So, let me remind everybody what we learned last week. Last week, uh, Moses sent 12 spies, one from each tribe, into the promised land and asked them to kind of survey the land, look at the uh, the cities, the people, uh, the fertility of the soil, the crops, the fruit, and you know, bring back some of the fruit. So they did, spent 40 days spying out the land, came back. Two of those spies, Caleb and Joshua, reported good news. It's a beautiful land flowing with milk and honey, and God's going to give it to us, and it's just going to be awesome. 10 of the 12 said, "We can't go. The people there are too big. They're giants, and they're fearsome, and they have huge cities, and we could never defeat them. So we are not recommending that we go." So as a matter of fact, they said it this way: "We cannot attack those people. They are stronger than we are. We look like grasshoppers in their eyes. Vice versa." So that was last week's lesson. They were scared and as a result, their report frightened all of the other people in the camp.
So we're going to start in chapter 14. And I'm going to, this is way too small for you to read, but I'll read it to you. The next two slides are kind of the setup for today's lesson. So, I didn't want to uh, leave them out and I couldn't figure out a way to say it any more eloquently than the Holy Spirit says it. So, we'll use his words and not mine. Verse one, "That night," that would be the night that the 10 spies told everybody, "We can't go in. They're too big." Okay. So that night, all the members of the community, all of Israel there, raised their voices and they wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron. And the whole assembly of the Israelites said to Moses and Aaron, "If, if only we had died in Egypt, or maybe just even in this wilderness. Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and our children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn't it be better for us just to go back to Egypt?" And they said to each other, "We should choose another leader and then let them take us back to Egypt."
Verse 5, then Moses and Aaron, in response to that, they fell face down in front of the whole Israelite assembly that was gathered there. Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jeffuna, who were among those who had explored the land. Remember, Joshua and Caleb are the ones that said, "Hey, not a big deal. It would be impossible for us, but it's not impossible for God. God can do this. We need to go in and and take the land." They tore their clothes and they said to the entire Israelite assembly, "The land that we passed through and explored. That's exceedingly good land. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land. And it's a land flowing with milk and honey, and he'll just, he'll give it to us. Only, do not rebel against the Lord. And do not be afraid of the people in the land because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. So do not be afraid of them." That's pretty powerful. So the assembly wants to go back to Egypt or just plain old die in the wilderness. They're afraid for their wives and their children. And Joshua says back to them, you know, "If God is with us, who can be against us? I mean, this is not going to be anything hard for God to do." But they did not want to hear what Joshua had to say. So, they instead decided it would be better to kill Joshua and Caleb, Moses, and Aaron. Let's kill the one who would lead us into the promised land, and that would be a fellow named Joshua. Now, the name Joshua, Yeshua, is Hebrew that means "God saves." It's actually Jesus's name. Jesus is the Greek version of Joshua, Yeshua. So, they've decided they want to kill Jesus here, or at least that version of Jesus.
And in verse 10, look at this. "The whole assembly talked about stoning them." That would be Moses and Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb. Then the glory, at that point, now that they've decided they're going to kill Joshua, the one God has chosen, they already know this, to lead them into the promised land. Then it says here, "The glory of the Lord appeared in the tent of the meeting, at the tent of the meeting, to all of the Israelites." And this is where we're going to pick up the focal verses. Here's what God says. He says to Moses, "How long?" Now, you remember a lot of the psalms, not a lot, several of the psalms that David wrote, uh, they had they had the phrase in it, "How long, O Lord?" Well, in this, it was a lament. Okay? Well, this time it's going to get flipped because God's going to be the one doing the lamenting here. He says, "How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me? In spite," and this is where it begins to get pretty interesting here, "in spite of all the signs that I have performed among them." Well, there are the 10 plagues, including the plague of the firstborn, where all of the firstborn in Israel that had put the blood of the lamb over the door were spared. Uh, then Pharaoh finally says, "Let him go." And then they cross the Red Sea because God parts the sea. And then God kills Pharaoh and his army by collapsing the Red Sea on them. And then they get to Mount Sinai and there's smoke and God's presence on Mount Sinai. And then Moses comes down with these ten commandments and there's a new covenant. And then they spend a year there at Mount Sinai where God provides for their food with manna and for their water with water from the rock that Moses strikes. So all of those things God does supernaturally for them. And yet, even in spite of all these signs, they've decided that they can't deal with the thought of going into this land.
Verse 12. So, God is going to come up with an idea here. This is one of the most interesting conversations that I've ever read in scripture. So, follow this with me. It is kind of eye-opening here. Uh, so God says to Moses, "Look, I've decided I'm just going to strike them, the Israelites. I'm going to strike them down with a plague. I'm just going to wipe them out. But I will make you, Moses, into a nation greater and stronger than they are." In other words, remember, he made the promise, the covenant with Abraham, to and Isaac and Jacob. And Jacob becomes Israel. And so now, Israel are the, they are God's people. They're the people of the promise. And and now God is saying after they refuse to go into the promised land, I'm I'm just washing my hands of Israel and I'm going to start over with a new promise. And that promise is going to be Moses with you. That's that's that's something else. But Moses is going to intercede. Moses is going to argue for God to forgive even this horrible sin. Moses says back to the Lord, "Don't do that. The Egyptians will hear about it. By your power, you brought these people up from among the Egyptians. And then the Egyptians will tell the inhabitants of this land, the Canaanites and all the other tribes that live there, they'll, if you do that, Egypt, the Egyptians will find out that you did that and that you failed. And they're going to tell the people in Canaan where we're headed for the promised land. They're going to tell that you have failed to bring your people, your chosen people, into the land. And they, the Egyptians and the Canaanites, they've already heard that you, Lord, are now," follow this logic that Moses says, "they've already heard these things about you, and yet you're going to fail if you do that. They've heard about you that you are with the nation of Israel, and that you have, they have seen you face to face." Well, at least Moses has not really seen him face to face, but Moses has encountered God in the cloud and in the fire and on Mount Sinai. And they, the people, they've heard that your cloud, the cloud of your presence stays over Israel all the time, day and night, to protect them. And that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. They've heard that you have brought them free with the plagues. You've taken them through the Red Sea. They've heard that you are in their presence, that that you surround them, that you guide them, you lead them. They've heard all these things about you. So if you put all these people to death, leaving none of them alive, then the nations who have heard all these things about you, they will say that you were not able to bring these people into the land that he promised them on oath. So instead of bringing them in, he failed at that. So now he's just going to kill them all in the wilderness. Do you want them to say that about you? Now may the Lord's strength be displayed just as you have declared. In other words, you need to maintain your righteousness by judging this terrible sin. But remember, you are slow to anger. You abound in love and you forgive sin and you forgive rebellion. You've already done that many times. He's reminding God of who he is, his very character. Yet, you are a God that doesn't leave sin unpunished. You punish the children for the sins of the parents to the third and the fourth generation. So, you are righteous, you forgive, but you are also righteous in that you punish sin. And the consequence, and the consequence of sin is going to be that punishment.
So Moses summarizes his argument. He says, "In accordance with your great love, I pray that you forgive the sin of these people. Just as you have pardoned them from the time that they left Egypt until now, continue to forgive their rebellion, forgive their sin." And here's what God says back. He said, "I have forgiven them just as you asked." Wow, that's amazing. He goes and he says to Moses, "I give up. They're always going to rebel. They're always going to reject me. And therefore, I'm just going to start over with you and your children, and we'll do this all over again." It kind of hearkens back to Noah and the ark. And Moses says, "Don't, don't do that. You have demonstrated your power and your love for these people. Don't allow that to all be wasted. You are loving and kind and longsuffering. Forgive them. But I understand as a righteous God, you must judge their sin." And so God finishes up by saying, "I have forgiven them just as you asked." And next, we're going to get into, "But nevertheless, I am loving. I am kind and I will forgive them. But I am going to have to give them the consequences of this sin. Nevertheless, as surely as I live," and that is pretty sure, "and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the earth," and it does fill the earth. So, he's he's really making an oath on himself here. He says, "Surely as I live, not one of those who saw my glory and all of these signs that I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, not one of these people because they have disobeyed me and tested me 10 times." Now, this is, we didn't know that. I didn't add them up, but apparently there are 10 uh plagues in Egypt. And now up to this point in their history, they have rejected and tested God 10 times. So God says, "I performed 10 miracles. They've rejected me 10 times. So now it's time to pay the piper. Not one of them, therefore, will ever see the land that I promised on oath to their ancestors. Not one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it."
But, and he's going to go back and he's going to say, "Caleb and and Joshua, my, because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and he follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land that he went to." In other words, he's already been there to spy it out, and his descendants will inherit it. And he's also speaking, of course, of Joshua because Joshua is the one that leads them in. He says, "You have really chosen your own punishment here. Your own words have caused your punishment. As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do just to you. The very thing that I heard you say to me, you will all die in the wilderness." Now, this is verses 29 and 30. All who are 20 years old, except for Caleb and Joshua. So that would be 600,000 men plus their wives and any children that are over 20. They will all, none of them will go in because they're held accountable. None of them will go into the promised land. By the way, 40 years later when they take the second census, there are almost exactly the same number of people 20 years and older. 600,000 versus 600 maybe and 1,000 of people. So throughout that part of the wilderness, all of those people died and were replaced by children who were younger than 20 years old. All of all who will, except for Caleb and Joshua. Your children, however, the ones that you said they're going to take our wives and children as plunder. Those children, those children I will lead into the promised land. And oh, by the way, you will for the rest of your lives wander for 40 years. One year for each day that the spies explored the land. That's over a million people that are going to die during a 40-year period of time. That's 68 people a day. That's almost 68 people. Yeah. That's almost three people. That's three people a day. Uh, 68 people a day. I think that's what it, if you take a million, divide it by 40 years, that's like 68 funerals a day. That's a lot of people that die. Now, sometimes they had a plague and more than that died, but on average, that was, that's a lot of funerals to have to preach.
So let me summarize chapter 14. What does it really mean? Well, chapter 14, Israel does their most horrible rebellion. Of all the rebellions, of all the murmuring, of all the um, the resisting God, this is the big one. They lack faith to enter the land. Joshua plus Moses and Aaron and Caleb, they plead with the people to have faith that God can do this. But then in verse 10, the leaders decide to kill Joshua plus Moses and Aaron and Caleb. So this was the first plot on the one who would lead them into the promise, first plot to kill the one who would lead them into the promised land. It happens again with a man named Jesus, Joshua. Moses then intercedes for Israel with God about their punishment. Instead of, uh, basically what God was talking about was he was talking about nullifying the covenant that he had made with Abraham and restarting it with a new covenant with Moses. And and Moses says, "Don't do that." So God maintains the covenant, but unfortunately, the people are going to perish. God issues his judgment for Israel's faithfulness in their rebellion. Faithless, faithlessness in their rebellion, and Israel attempts to enter without God. We don't read this. We haven't read it, but in verses 40 through 45, they go, "Oh, no. We've really messed up this time. We'll just go ahead and go in by ourselves." And and Moses says, "You should not do that. That's not part of God's plan. Now, you have rebelled. He's issued his judgment, and you're going to fail." And they did. The Amalekites and the Canaanites uh killed a bunch of them. They suffered great defeat. So, Israel did not enter. It wasn't because, now this is, I found this pretty interesting. It wasn't because they broke a law or a commandment. You remember the ten commandments and all the laws that Moses gave. It wasn't, they didn't enter because they were breaking a commandment. And it wasn't because that they hadn't been forgiven by God. They were forgiven by God. Okay? It was simply because of their lack of faith. It was their unbelief that kept them out of the promised land.
So how do we apply that? Well, we, we can apply it to three different groups. Let's apply it for Israel back then. Well, at that point, they had hardened their hearts. They refused to enter while ignoring all of God's miraculous provisions up to that point in time. This is the part that you just kind of blows my mind. You would think after a year of being in the wilderness and after witnessing all those plagues and witnessing the Red Sea, all these people had seen, they'd been there. They witnessed all of these things, these miracles of manna every single morning and water from the rock and the cloud over Mount Sinai and the tablets that Moses brought down. After witnessing all of that, for some reason, they're afraid that God is not strong enough or able to take them into the promised land. They were overwhelmed. Their hearts were hard. They preferred instead to return to Egypt. Remember when last week they were saying, "You know, we're tired of this manna. We want to, we would rather go back to Egypt." Maybe that was two weeks ago. They preferred to return to Egypt or simply just let us die here in the wilderness. So that that actually became their punishment.
What's the meaning for Israel after that? In other words, this was a terrible, terrible thing, an event in Israel's history. It was, it is spoken of many more times in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament. This was a, a turning point for the nation Israel. This was a big deal in their history. Such a big deal that David uses this situation when he writes Psalm 95. It's the promised land that David equates to the Sabbath rest. David encourages in this psalm Israel to worship God as their savior. He encourages them to look back over all the miraculous, wonderful things God has done for his chosen people and to worship him and not harden their hearts. He warns them, "Don't harden your hearts. Don't refuse to enter into God's rest," or we're going to find out that rest is the same as the promised land, as they, Israel, did back then in the wilderness. So Psalm 95, David talks about this refusal to enter the promised land as a refusal to enter into God's rest. And he takes that and links it back to God's rest as in the Sabbath day.
And how is that going to work for us today as Christians? Does it still apply to us? Well, actually, it even applies more so. Meaning for us today. We can find in Hebrews chapter 3 and 4, where the writer of Hebrews, the Holy Spirit, links the term "promised land" to be synonymous with "Sabbath rest," which is the rest of God. That's the seventh day where Adam and Eve were resting with God after creation in the Garden of Eden. And it's linked then to eternal life with God. That's what Adam and Eve were experiencing until the sin. Uh, so until they rejected or rebelled against God. This example in Israel's life isn't by accident. It was there is there to be an example to us that we not be guilty of doing this same thing. It wasn't about Israel. It wasn't about any people. It was about any people entering the promised land. It was about us entering into God's rest through Jesus Christ. This example is about God's promise to lead us into the Garden of Eden, paradise, heaven. It's a place to live with him at peace forever. However, just like the Israelites in this story, we must believe that God can do it and has done it through Jesus and not rebel.
So, let's keep going. Hebrews 4:1, "The promise of entering into God's rest," that promise, even though it happened thousands of years ago for Israel, that promise still stands. It's a promise of today. And he says, "Let us be careful that none of us, none of you, be found to have fallen short of that promise. For we also have had the good news, the gospel, proclaimed to us just as those Israelites had the good news proclaimed back then." If you don't think the gospel message was proclaimed in the Old Testament, that's exactly what the writer of Hebrews is saying here. But the message that they heard was of no value to them. Why? Because they didn't share the faith of those who obeyed. That would be Joshua and Caleb. So the shadows that are in this story are important. The law, which is represented by Moses here, leads the nation of Israel right up to the border of God's Sabbath rest. That's what Paul says about the law. The law leads us to Jesus to salvation. And that's what Moses did. He led him right up to the edge of the promised land. Joshua, which is Jesus, that's "God saves." Joshua then is prepared and he encourages in this lesson everyone to trust God and to enter into his rest or the promised land. But instead, Israel has hardened their hearts and they decided to kill Joshua instead of believing his message. God then tells them that they will never enter in. That was then they rejected God's offer. Israel had an abundance of evidence that God was able to safely take them into the land. They'd witnessed the plagues. They walked through the Red Sea. They had God's presence on Mount Sinai, manna and water, pillar of smoke and fire. Everything that the Egyptians knew about what God had done, they had experienced personally. And yet, they still rejected God's promise.
Well, people today are still rejecting God's promise, his offer to take them into his rest, restore them to his rest. They still do. They did then, and they still do today. We have a lot of evidence of Jesus's death and resurrection. And we have an invitation from God in John 3:16 to believe, to enter in. And in Romans chapter 1, Paul tells us that all creation has testified to God's glory. Remember when God said, "As surely as I live and as surely as my glory fills the earth." Well, God, Paul says, everybody can look around and see in creation the presence of God, God's glory in his creation. It's all there, just as those 10 plagues, just as the Red Sea, just as the pillar of fire and smoke. They all know, everyone knows that God exists, but they refuse to acknowledge him. And instead, they place their faith in created things instead of the creator. They reject, reject faith in Jesus as the provider of God's salvation and the leader who will take us into God's rest. And God says, "Therefore, they will never enter into my rest." Jesus is the same as Joshua is the same as "God saves." Israel rejected the plea of Joshua to enter and they wanted to kill him. Israel rejected the plea of Jesus along with Gentiles. Remember the Romans with the crucifixion, and they did kill Jesus.
Today you have a choice. I've made mine. Beverly's made hers. Today you have a choice. You're at the very edge of the promised land. You've got God's invitation in John 3:16. You have God's promise that he will bring you in. You know that God is God. You know that he has done this. You know that Jesus rose from the dead. There's historical evidence. There's the Bible that tells us. You now have the same choice that those people had thousands of years ago, that the leaders of Israel had when they crucified Jesus. You've got that same choice. Do not harden your hearts. The writer of Hebrews says it this way in Hebrews 3: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." That same promised land, that same Sabbath rest is available to you through Jesus Christ. You're forgiven because of his death on the cross. You're enabled by his resurrection to go into the promised land. It may sound difficult, if not impossible, but it's not. Why? You're not able. None of us are. But God is. God is able.
Pray with me. Father, this was the most remarkable lesson. Just think about the dialogue that you and Moses had where Moses says, "Because of who you are, you are able. But I know you're a righteous God, and you must judge sin." What a beautiful, beautiful summary of the gospel message. God provided his only son so that whosoever believes in him will not perish and die in the wilderness, but have eternal life there in the Sabbath rest. Father, help those who have hardened their hearts to hear your voice and to believe that you are able in Jesus. Amen. Amen.
Well, those two lessons, I believe, are the ultimate expression of the Old Testament version of the gospel. So, I hope that you will believe. Until next week, know that we love you. See you later. Bye. Bye. Bye.