Category: Bible studies

Without a healthy fear, we would be a very unhealthy people. In some situations, fear is the healthiest emotional response we can have. If we weren’t afraid of alligators, we would become complacent hiking through the swampy areas of Florida. If we weren’t afraid of sheer cliffs, we would see people toppling off the side of the Grand Canyon daily, because they foolishly hung over the rocks. If we weren’t afraid of catastrophic failure, we would routinely take unreasonable engineering risks. Fear isn’t intrinsically a bad thing – it can be the very deterrence you need to keep you from doing something incredibly dumb, or permanently crippling. One more thing about fear – it can be an instrument in the toolbox of God to teach us some very important truths about life. God can use our fears to graphically illustrate to us our constant need of Him.

When the late President Roosevelt said on December 8, 1947: “We have nothing more to fear than fear itself.” He meant to instruct the American people they need not fear the Japanese ability to overtake them – but needed to fear a reaction that was not wise or healthy. The American people needed resolve – not cowardice. They needed determination, not bickering in the halls of power. In every case we have seen, the response to fear is what defines it as a valuable emotion to instruct us.

• If we begin in fear and end trusting God – we learn anew of His faithfulness.
• If we begin in fear and end victimized, blaming and scorning God’s plan – we have gained nothing of value. Rather, we have let the size of the problem block our view of God’s faithfulness, God’s majesty and God’s power.

The key is in our response…

Key Principle: Being afraid isn’t the problem – that is just acknowledging that you can’t do something without God. The issue is what you do next.

Fear isn’t wrong in itself, but poses a test that can only be passed with proper response. We ALL have fears, and God acknowledged at our Creation that we were not equipped to handle life alone. Man was made with the need for others, incomplete in himself. It was for that reason, even before the entrance of sin – God said: “It is NOT GOOD for man to be alone.” Fear is an acknowledgement that many things in life are beyond my control. Somehow, just having another person to share the fear with is helpful – even if they have no more ability to control the circumstances than we do. Fear points out to us that we cannot do things alone – life is just too hard to take it on without help.

Young people know something about fear. They are facing a turbulent world that is changing fast. The field they study for today will likely dramatically change three or four times in their career. They will begin young and ahead of the curve, but they know they won’t stay that way. Some of us remember the birth of color television while they have never lived without a microwave oven. What changes will be ahead for them? They don’t know – and the smart ones have a healthy mistrust for the future.

Young parents know fear. God invested into your life this precious and helpless little life. You wake from sleep when they cry, and you hear their tiny breaths against their bassinette pillow and count them. You know when they have the slightest sniffle, or when their bottom is not dry. You feel their pain before they understand it. What parent cannot understand? We saw the pain in the eyes of parents of Newtown, Connecticut. We know we are raising their children in a world that can be perilous to its weakest members. The faces of missing children sit on the breakfast table affixed to the milk carton – a reminder that there are evil people in the world that are willing to harm its tender citizens. They learn to let them go to school that first year, but it is not without reticence and pain.

Seniors know fear. For those among us with fewer calendar days ahead than behind, they know about fear. As the body slowly ages and loses strength, the fears increase. We watch friends fade in failing health, and we know the same will probably be our lot – save God’s intervention. We see more and more the failing of our faculties even as we watch a dramatic rise of victimization – and the response is that we are more and more afraid.

Being afraid isn’t our big problem…responding incorrectly is.

Let me show you a story that was recorded to instruct us in this truth in Numbers 13 and 14.

The Instruction (13:1-20)

13:1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses saying, 2 “Send out for yourself 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 fathers’ tribes, every one a leader among them.” 3 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. 4 These then were their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur; 5 from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori; 6 from the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh; 7 from the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph; 8 from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Nun; 9 from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu; 10 from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi; 11 from the tribe of Joseph, from the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi; 12 from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli; 13 from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael; 14 from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi; 15 from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi. 16 These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land; but Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua. 17When Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, he said to them, “Go up there into the Negev; then go up into the hill country. 18 “See what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many. 19 “How is the land in which they live, is it good or bad? And how are the cities in which they live, are they like open camps or with fortifications? 20 “How is the land, is it fat or lean? Are there trees in it or not? Make an effort then to get some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.

Three truths are offered in the opening verses of the story to set up the scene for the FEAR FACTOR lesson:

The story began with an instruction of God. The Lord told Moses to send the spies to Canaan (13:1). This is so important to the narrative that it is repeated in 13:3 “at the command of the Lord”. It wasn’t an inner yearning to get out of the desert by the leader – it was the prompting of God that set up the story.

We have seen numerous times a simple truth: “Where God guides, God provides.” The men were not instructed to walk into the situation unwatched and unguarded. God was calling them. At the same time, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that obedience is often a call to real courage. As our world continually frames Jesus as the enemy of tolerance, this is becoming a more and more important observation – our faith in the coming days will urgently call us to the “courage of obedience”:

• To stand up for Jesus Christ in the co-ed dorm, without being a judgmental and obnoxious person will take courage.

• To stand with conviction at the local scout troop meeting and frame “character” as that which continues the values of the Judeo-Christian heritage the scout troop was founded upon will take courage.

• To push back in a school system that offers a month of witches and demons at Halloween, but forces a Christmas celebration into a “Winter holiday” will take courage.

• To go to the office and learn to serve the other people there without descending into a course joke or extravagant drinking binge at the office party will take courage.

• To resist the overtures of a co-worker who is unhappily married while you are desperately hoping to meet someone to spend your life with will take courage.

Jesus didn’t call us to the easy. He called us to have courage – to believe that He will guide us and He will supply us what we need to follow Him. He will offer the companionship, the clarity and the concern to keep us going when we are different than those around us. Obedience takes courage.

They were to send one man from each tribe (13:2-16). One of the ways God provides for us to muster courage is through offering us companionship. The list of the people is carefully included in the ancient text:

• From Reuben was sent Shammua son of Zaccur (13:4).
• From Simeon was sent Shaphat son of Hori (13:5).
• From Judah was sent Caleb son of Jephunneh (13:6).
• From Isaachar was sent Yigal son of Joseph (13:7).
• From Ephraim was sent Hoshea (Joshua) son of Nun (13:8).
• From Benjamin was sent Palti son of Raphu (13:9).
• From Zebulun was sent Gaddiel son of Sodi (13:10).
• From Manasseh was sent Gaddi son of Susi (13:11).
• From Dan was sent Ammiel son of Gemalli (13:12).
• From Asher was sent Sethur son of Michael (13:13).
• From Naphtali was sent Nahbi son of Vophsi (13:14).
• From Gad was sent Geuel son of Machi (13:15).

The list is not in the order of the rank in the camp – the birth order of the sons (Genesis 29 and 35). It was not in the order of their encampment around the Tabernacle (Numbers 2). The order likely reflects the ORDER THE MEN SHOWED UP to check in for the purpose of following God’s instruction. God knew that it was essential that the witness of the events be given by those who were trusted across the ranks of society. He ordered specifically that the men were to be called from among the recognized leaders of the tribe.

The men were directed by Moses where to go and what to do – first to the Negev (north of them) and then across the depression into the mountains (13:18-20). Their seven-part assignment was to do the following:

1. See what the land is like – generally map out the area (13:18a).
2. See the condition of the people – individually are they well fed and strong or weak and sickly (13:18b).
3. Examine the terrain for movement and development – scope out roads, connections between people, etc (13:19a).
4. Identify if the people are living in tent camps or along fortified (walled) cities (13:19b).
5. Look specifically at the soil for agricultural capability and discern if there is sufficient top soil for farming staple crops (13:20a).
6. Define the area for forest cover and grove production (13:20b).
7. If possible, get some fruit from the field (it was the season of new grapes) (13:20b).

Here is the heart of the matter: God did not keep them from a realistic view of what they were facing – He directed them right into the core of the challenge. Like a dentist that doesn’t withhold the size of the needle that we will be experiencing, God let the men see the challenge ahead. Because God knows our hearts, He had something in mind. Have you ever wondered: “What was the benefit of letting them see the walled cities and mightily prepared men before they were to engage them?” Some may feel God cruel for firing the warning shot into their hearts – but the daunting size of the challenge is part of the lesson of the FEAR FACTOR. God was removing the UNKNOWN from them, and replacing it with the IDENTIFIED and RECOGNIZED size of the true challenge.

Many times our fears are conjured up – and often they are sized beyond any reasonable proportion. We see through the eyes of fear EVERYTHING as too hard, too powerful for us. We dream up fears and add to our anxiety based on problems that are solely creations of our own mind. God wants us to face the TRUTH about the size of a task, and our need of Him in all of it – but not to conjure up bigger mountains to climb then the real ones. Life is challenging enough – He doesn’t call us to fret the unseen. He sees. Yet, in His mercy, sometimes we get a glimpse of the weight of the coming commission – and we should look carefully.

It is in the nature of people to minimize the challenge involved in something they DESIRE, and to maximize the challenge is something they DREAD. If you dangle before a man something he longs for, he will devise a plan to attain it – no matter the risk. If you place before him a task that he does NOT DESIRE to do – he will find an excuse to avoid it. The people had already been complaining about the terrain, the menu and the God that was leading them. God opened their eyes to the land before them to GROW THEIR HUNGER for the land ahead – and allow Egypt to fade behind them. When He did, they reacted with the Egyptian hunger still very much intact.

The Journey (13:21-24)

13:21 So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, at Lebo-hamath. 22 When they had gone up into the Negev, they came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) 23 Then they came to the valley of Eshcol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes; and they carried it on a pole between two men, with some of the pomegranates and the figs. 24 That place was called the valley of Eshcol, because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut down from there.

The men did as instructed (13:21-24). The narrative followed the report of their specific journey:

• They came up through the wilderness of Zin to the open area of the Negev (Rehob may be a city, or may simply be the enlarged area) into Levo-Hamath (“to come in to the hot place” – again either an encampment, or more likely a description of the area – a broad and hot bowl) as recorded in Numbers 13:21.

The wilderness of Zin is an area surrounding and including the deep ravine of Wadi Zin – a wild goat refuge (ibex) with waterfalls and springs. It is a steep, cave-filled, brown rocky plateau above and green valley below. The descent it tricky, and the fragmentation of the rock makes it even more dangerous. As they began, they had the advantage of cliff lookouts, and caves. Mesopotamian Pistachio trees grow in the bottom today – perhaps memorials of older trees from that time. Coming from the Wilderness of Paran, a largely barren wasteland, these trees provided excellent cover for spies. At the same time, their absolute best cloak was the Summer heat – for no one ventures far in that place during the heat of the year..

• Passing through the Negev depression, they ascended to the mountains of the Hebron plateau and descended along the slope of the Eschol (“cluster”) wadi to the west, gathering a large vine of new grapes, along with some pomegranates and figs. The first figs come out in Spring (around May or June) but many are not harvested until later in the summer – because their large leaves protect the fruit from spoiling quickly. Summer grapes begin to ripen in July and August. That means the spies were sent during the hottest part of the year – Summer in the desert, as recorded in Numbers 13:22-24.

Eventually it was time to “step out” of the shadows of the cliffs into the open area of the Negev basin. Even in the summer, men could be spotted miles away from the encampments at Arad, Beersheva or Gerar. The men must have traveled in the dark of night, risking the dangers of travel without sight – and being forced to trust God as they moved around inhabited tent camps that looked more like their own. There were fortifications, but they were seeing but a few of them, surrounded by massive tent caravan camps – as traders moved about in this southern east-west depression of the country where the rail line travels today.

Bypassing the camps, they began to climb along the defined roadways into the mountains. The steady incline was somewhat arduous, but they must have been thrilled with approaching the land of Father Abraham, and using (perhaps for the first time) roadways that were familiar to him. In the walk, the men learned that one way to build faith and defeat fear is to REMEMBER. God hadn’t left their fathers – and He wouldn’t leave THEM. The stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph were the stories of God encountering men in fear, but leaving them in FAITH.

Let me offer this advice: When God is calling you to do something that requires conviction and courage, look back. Look in your own life, and in the testimonies of those around you. Look back to the lives of those who followed God in days long ago, their tales enshrined in the Scriptures of long ago. Draw courage from God’s record of faithfulness. Learn about right and proper expectation so that the days ahead will not surprise you. God hasn’t just done things in the past – He RECORDED THEM – because He intended you to learn of Him and be strengthened.

The Spies Returned (13:25-29)

13:25 When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days, 26 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. 27 Thus they told him, and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 “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 Anak there. 29 “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.”

The spies were gone for forty days – but finally returned and came to Moses and Aaron who remained encamped in the wilderness of Paran, in the area of Kadesh (probably the designation of the placement of the Tabernacle and center camp – thus designated “holy” or “sacred”. They offered the following report:

The Initial Good Report:

• We went into the land as instructed, and the land is abundant (zub is “gushing”) with agriculture and pasturing flocks (13:27).
• Here is a sample of the fruit we secured for you (13:27b).

The Initial Bad Report:

• The people are fierce (‘az can be used for “fierce” or “rugged”).
• The cities are fortified and impregnable (“batzar” is fortified and also impossible).
• The children of the Anakim live in the hill country.
• The desert marauding Amalekites live in the Negev basin.
• The highly developed city culture of the Hittites and several other Canaanite tribes are scattered through the mountain region.

Several things are clear about their report. They traveled across the breadth of the southern mountains of what would one day be called Judah. The saw the low hills of the Shephelah on the west – where the grapes grew in the Sorek and Eschol valleys, the high limestone plateau of Hebron and the roadway up to Jebus (future Jerusalem), and the eastern wilderness that drops dramatically off to the Jordan River and Dead Sea. They saw the people, and assessed well the landscape and population. Archaeology of the Canaanite (Bronze Age) culture in the land bears out the description we see in Numbers 13. This was a prosperous city culture with caravan traders that brought riches from afar.

Let me ask again: “Why would God send the men to see the power of the enemy they were going to have to face?”

It wasn’t simply to SCARE THEM. It was as much to PREPARE THEM. It was to SHAKE THEM from their visions of Egypt and give them a taste of a future THEY COULD HAVE if they followed Him!

Recently I counseled a young man that was very much in love with a young lady that did not want the relationship to continue. He was heartbroken. He cried out to God: “Why did you let me have such a wonderful relationship if you were only going to take her away?” I thought about his question, and I am convinced it was to help him see his future. There IS a woman for him – he just hasn’t found her yet. He was beginning to believe it wouldn’t happen, and the experience in the last year with her has revived the dream and given him a hunger to seek God’s best for him. It also did something else… it helped strengthen his heart and teach him about giving it away too quickly. Part of the foreshadowing is about VISION, and part about PREPARATION – but all of it is about learning to trust God.

The Recommendations (13:30-33)

13:30 Then 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.” 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.” 32 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. 33 “There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

Contrasting calls confused the people. Caleb’s call to move forward was swiftly shouted down by counting off the number of obstacles before the crowd. At the heart of their argument was the statement “We are not able”. They were completely correct. If they were to attempt to take possession of their inheritance in their own strength – they would be humiliated (which we will see graphically illustrated in the next chapter). The truth is LIFE IS NOT DESIGNED FOR YOU TO BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT ALONE. Jesus said, “Apart from Me you can do NOTHING.” The simple fact is that life doesn’t work when lived on our own strength and our own resources. The sooner we understand that, the less painful life will be.

If the view was a test, there is little question that the sons of Jacob and their tribes failed miserably. They heard the challenge, and it set them back on their heels. Why? Did they think the land was going to be vacated before them by God? There are many believers in our day that have been poorly taught that such should be their expectation. They believe if “God is in it” things will go smoothly, and troubles will melt on the road – like a mirage on a hot roadway in summer. It is a false view of the world, and a flawed view of God that weakens them and makes perilous their real preparedness for the days ahead.

Perhaps, like most believers today, the issue wasn’t that they didn’t expect a fight, but that they expected the fight to be something THEY could do. They believed that God should lead them into a life that THEY could provide with their hands, their ingenuity, their might. They saw themselves as part pioneer and part servant… but that isn’t the right view. They didn’t understand the God of the Bible. He doesn’t WANT you to be fully able to live life in YOUR STRENGTH. He wants you to KNOW you need Him. He wants you to learn to LEAN on Him for both the daily and the critical issues of your life. He wants to walk through life WITH YOU.

A self-reliant person sees the problems and possibilities – and matches them to his or her strengths and weaknesses. God’s man or woman faces the challenges with the “X” factor of God’s call and God’s enabling. How do I get that perspective?

• First, look at Caleb’s short testimony. He hushed the people – because reacting to the problem solves NOTHING.

• Second, he called on the people to move toward what God promised them.

He saw all that the others saw – but he remembered the promises of God. He didn’t say they should simply CONQUER it – he said they should TAKE POSSESSION of it (“yarash” is to dispossess the others of it). He argued as one who was confident that God would give them their inheritance – because God promised it to them.

When we say:

• It’s impossible. God says- All things are possible with Me.
• I can’t do it. God says- You can do all things through Christ.
• I’m too tired. God says- Come to Me, I will give you rest.
• I’m worried and frustrated. God says- Cast all your cares on Me.
• I can’t go on. God says- My grace is sufficient for you.
• I can’t figure things out. God says- I will direct your steps.
• I’m not able. God says- I am able.
• It’s not worth it. God says- It will be worth it.
• I can’t manage. God says- I will supply all your needs.
• I’m afraid. God says- I have not given you a spirit of fear.
• I don’t have enough faith. God says- I’ve given everyone a measure of faith.
• I’m not smart enough. God says- I give you wisdom.
• I feel all alone. God says- I will never leave you or forsake you.

A mature believer clothes himself with the promises of God. He isn’t presumptive, but he learns them, and he celebrates them. He anticipates God’s goodness and faithfulness to fulfill God’s ends. He looks for ways for God to work in and through him to stabilize and complete a work in others. He seeks God’s call, and follows God’s lead…. And he doesn’t let fear deter him from following God’s Word and holding God’s hand.

Being afraid isn’t the problem – that is just acknowledging that you can’t do something without God. The issue is what you do next.

When you don’t face fear and respond in faith – you walk in hesitance. You are never quite sure…A man flew into Chicago & hired a taxi to take him downtown. As he was riding along they came to a red light & the driver went right on through the red light. The man said, “Hey, the light was red. You’re supposed to stop.” The driver said, “Yeah, I know, but my brother does it all the time.” Soon they came to a second red light & again he went right straight through. The passenger said, “You’re going to get us killed. That light was red. Why didn’t you stop?” The driver said, “Don’t worry about it. My brother does it all the time.” Then they came to a green light & he stopped. The man said, “The light is green. Now is the time to go. Why don’t you go on through?” The driver answered, “I know it’s green. But you never know when my brother may be coming through.” Fear has to be dealt with properly – or it will paralyze our ability to accomplish God’s call! (from sermon central illustrations).

Before it was a movie in 1998, the screen play written by Frank Messina called “With Friends Like These” was already a pop hit among a group of actors in Hollywood. The movie was no great success as I recall, but in smaller venues, like the Munich film awards, it was seen as a lovable and warm look into the actor’s craft. The idea of the screenplay was to pose four actors vying for a part in a Hollywood movie about gangsters. It was a film about making a film, with actors playing actors. I did not see the movie, and cannot say if it delivered on its entertainment value. I am not endorsing its language or its content – I don’t know about how it came out. Why am I mentioning it, then? Because the idea of the screenplay intrigued me, so I read about it. The comedy was formed on the premise that each actor had to perform a stereotypical part of the underworld mob – to project they could comfortably live with the Corleone family and deal with “horse heads in their beds”. If the references mean nothing to you, don’t worry about it – it means you have kept yourself from living in the world of the “Godfather”, and are, in no way, related to Al Pachino or Marlin Brando. Here’s the idea I that caught my attention: If I am surrounded by people that I cannot trust to care for me, life would take on an isolating coldness that I don’t know if I could endure.

You see, I admit that I have lived, in at least emotional ways, a sheltered life. I have parents that love me – or at least they have made me believe they did! I have spent hours with them, laughing, and enjoying them as adult friends. In my youth, they encouraged me to try things, to teach and to explore. From my home, I ventured into the Near East and became the wandering traveler that is still in my blood thirty years later. I came under the tutelage of some of the best teachers the world had to offer in the fields of my chosen studies. Along the way I married a young woman that has been so very faithful and kind to me – as I dragged her around the world. A small town girl, she took on the streets of foreign cities and has become the more aggressive driver of the two of us – and in many ways the more engaged traveler. In short, I have come home for fifty plus years of life, to a home of people who love me, and are encouraging to me. The hard reality of Pastoral ministry is that I have come to know that is NOT NORMAL for many people these days. Some of you come home to something very different than my experiences. Some of you cannot relate to my upbringing. As a result, when people come for counsel, I find myself thinking about the people in their lives: “With friends like you have, who needs enemies?”

If your life isn’t much like mine, you may find that our story today is closer to YOU than to me. Our story is about Moses, and the knives that were stuck in his back by his own brother and sister. There is nothing like the pain of betrayal in the midst of a battle – and make no mistake – leading Israel through the wilderness WAS a battle for Moses. In fact, in the last lessons we have been studying complaints that swept the camp of Israel from its edge to its very core. They appear to have started with the superstitious and pagan among the rabble on the edge of the camp stumbling across what may have been stellae – or markers of the edge of Egyptian territory. What should have been a moment of homage to pagan gods was bypassed by the Hebrews, and the complaints started –that led to God sending lightning to burn the edges of the camp and warn the rabble of non-Israelites to get back in line. Eventually, the complaining spread – because it always does. Complaining is like yawning, it is contagious. Moses got in on it as well, and wisely took his grievance toward God. It wasn’t long until the fire was lit on the tongues of Moses’ brother and sister – and this is today’s lesson.

Let me ask you a question: Have you ever had a dear friend or even a family member criticize you behind your back?

Perhaps they disagreed with an important decision you made in your life, and they just couldn’t seem to let it go! Moses had it happen to him – when he chose a WIFE that wasn’t on his sister’s list of candidates. They were apparently hurt by Moses’ independence in his decision – offended that he didn’t listen to them. Add to that, they appeared to be jealous that people didn’t understand how critical a role they played in the whole “get out of Egypt” scenario. Their words were harsh and God dealt with them to preserve His leader over the people, but also to make a point.

Key Principle: God takes our words seriously, and we cannot forget that! We need to be so very careful about how we use our mouths.

James warned of the damage a tongue can do – like a match to a parched forest. Jesus warned, in the midst of a message about the unpardonable sin of disbelief that: Matthew 12:36 ““But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.” The tongue inside our head may be the most dangerous weapon we possess in emotional terms.

Look back into the heart of the Israelite camp, some fifteen hundred years before Jesus came, and we will see the illustration of how the poisoned tongue can do its damage:

Numbers 12:1 Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had married a Cushite woman); 2 and they said, “Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?” And the LORD heard it. 3 (Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)

The Setting (Numbers 12:1-3)

If you look carefully at the situation, you will see how the attack of the tongue hit Moses from behind…

Notice the TIMING: The stab in the back came while the camp was under attack (12:1). “Then…”

We must remember that the people of God have been under a SPIRITUAL ATTACK. The timing of the attack against the leader is NOT coincidence – it is a planned shot at a weakened time. That is how the enemy works. He knows when to pick out your weakness and weariness and use it against you.

Notice the AGENTS: The stab in the back came from those closest to Moses (12:1). “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses.”

The enemy of our souls is not unwise about WHO he uses to stab at us. When he wants to get into our hearts, embitter our walk and insert the venom of complaint within us, he uses the people we care about. This is a favored tactic.

Notice the ISSUE: The stab hurt because it concerned the most personal of choices (12:1b). “…because of the Cushite woman whom he had married.”

We don’t if Moses chose to marry again, or if Zipporah had died – but Cushites were Africans not Israelites. Here is what we DO know. Moses wasn’t out dating women. He didn’t “bump into” a woman at Starbucks and begin a conversation in line. I recognize that the subject of our time together is NOT POLYGAMY, but let me just offer this… We cannot tell if Zipporah had died by this time – we simply don’t know. Let me pose my own understanding of the situation that may be a surprise to some of you — I don’t personally believe that Moses had multiple wives at all – I think the Midianite woman named Zipporah is the one referenced by Miriam and Aaron’s displeasure in this passage.

Let me be quick, but offer my case:

• Moses got married to a Midianite girl, a daughter of Jethro (also called Reuel), while he was on the run from his murder charge (for which he was guilty, we should add –cp. Exodus 3 and 4).

• Exodus 18 says that Moses had two sons – both by Zipporah – (18:3-4) … the name of the one was Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land: 4 And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the Mighty One of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.”

• In Exodus 4, Moses’ wife derided him for not circumcising their child (Ex. 4:24ff), and Moses left the camp under God’s orders with ONLY Aaron his brother to go to Pharaoh. There is NO indication that Zipporah was WITH MOSES during the plagues that fell on Egypt. IF Zipporah was NOT IN EGYPT, Miriam didn’t get to know her until after they arrived back in the Midianite territory. They may not have met before.

• Clearly the story of Exodus 18, when Jethro visits Moses is intended to tell the story that her return to her husband was NOT UNTIL they were in the wilderness. It wasn’t until that time that Miriam met Zipporah – and two women with vastly different life experiences and perspectives – were both close to the leader of the people. That is a recipe for tension.

Let me anticipate a question. Why is the woman in Numbers 12 called a “Cushite” – the word that some would call “Ethiopian”? I think it is because of her physical features – not necessarily her nationality. This is a comment about genetic appearance – not national identity.

The issue is illustrated in the Caribbean – where some “brown skinned” Hispanics look more like Africans than Hispanics – because of the history of the slave trade that passed through the region. Some Cubans, for instance, look “black” and others more “brown”. It isn’t hard to see how someone could pick out a “black” person who actually would categorize themselves as a “brown” person – is it? In short, I think she looked like a black African more than an Israelite – and the Midianites as a traveling band had mixed with other tribes for allegiance purposes.

If the issue WAS Zipporah, why not simply NAME HER? I think the text is trying to bear out the bad feeling. “That Cushite” was probably the way they were expressing their displeasure – not using her name. While we are on this point – let’s take a moment to be clear about how prejudice works – it is formed by an abstraction of someone not named. It is easy to hate when you don’t know someone and they are different from you. It is when you learn their name and engage their life that the abstract becomes the real.

The bottom line is that it appears to me the problem isn’t polygamy, but personality and perhaps personal prejudices. Miriam and Aaron weren’t attendees at Moses wedding, and the woman they met on the journey was not one they would have picked – no matter the reason.

My point is the same: it was a personal choice of Moses, and they didn’t like his choice.

Notice the MOTIVATION: The stab was a complaint that covered a deeper problem – the feeling of being slighted. Verse 2 says: “…and they said, “Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?”

Is it possible that Zipporah made some comment that reminded them of the importance of her husband? Maybe that is why the text links MOSES’ WIFE to the underlying complaint about recognition. What is clear is they weren’t just mocking wedding photos- they were hurt by something. When the complaining started in the camp – Moses got hit. So did his family. Even after he and God resolved the issue between them, Moses needed to attend to those around him. The enemy disrupted the camp, and he wasn’t leaving until the disruption left permanent scars on the people near to Moses. Dead Israelites from the “quail incident” were barely cold and the enemy was already working overtime to kill any relief on the part of the leader.

Did you notice the problem Miriam and Aaron seemed to express? They were JEALOUS of Moses’ recognition, and felt their vital contribution was passed over. The issue wasn’t the history of God’s prophetic voice – but the RECOGNITION of it. We who are in ministry must fight the battle of self-worth constantly. Though the world considers a Christian leader MORE IMPORTANT based on the SIZE of ministry – we need to be careful to keep our eyes fixed on the real measure, not the popular sentiment. It is possible that a leader can become more popular with people, and less faithful to God. In fact, it is a constant temptation to please people at the expense of being honest with hard texts of truth, found in God’s Word. Conversely, God may mark a leader’s ministry with numerical growth if it pleases Him to do so.

Every leader must be careful not to fall into the trap of reading “success” by attendance statistics or affirming comments. Our recognition and affirmation must come from above – not from those who surround us. We dare not “feed” off of the good will of others – for God sees our heart. He knows if He is happy with our work – and that is what truly counts. God is interested in a man or woman that will follow Him whether or not they get recognition this side of Heaven. Because that is true, Heaven’s choirs will laud some whose names were not well known on earth, and may skip some personalities who have become household names in each generation. We must commit to an audience of ONE – and please Him above all others.

Now, Notice the PROBLEM: The stab against Moses was heard by GOD! Verse two closes with a simple statement that becomes the foundation for every other action in the text: “…And the LORD heard it.”

Here is the warning in our lesson. God is LISTENING.

Our mouths are being monitored. Our complaints are overheard. Our blasphemies are recorded. Our lies are being scrutinized. Our exaggerations are being dissected. Our boasts are being examined… and all this by the ONE who’s very name is TRUTH.

Right in the middle of the story there is an insertion by some other writer, because God wanted something clear. Moses didn’t write verse three – he couldn’t have – or verse three would not have been true! The “drop in” to the text is this: Numbers 12:3 “(Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)” Why put this into the writing? Because God wanted something very clear. It wasn’t MOSES that was seeking retribution against his siblings – it was God’s ear on the camp. Moses wasn’t a SNITCH. He may not have even been aware at the time. There is no indication in the text that Moses knew WHY the three of the “Amram clan” were being called to stand at attention to God’s Voice in the desert that day.

God’s Response (12:4-13)

God answered the sin of Miriam and Aaron with word and symbol. He wanted to make a point that would stick with both of them – and then He wanted us to read about it. He made an example out of one sister to speak to all the sisters and brothers that would come in the generations of His work.

First, there was the verbal encounter with God at the Tabernacle – God made His position clear. He said:

Numbers 12:4 Suddenly the LORD said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, “You three come out to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them came out. 5 Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and He called Aaron and Miriam. When they had both come forward, 6 He said, “Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream. 7 “Not so, with My servant Moses, He is faithful in all My household; 8 With him I speak mouth to mouth, Even openly, and not in dark sayings, And he beholds the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid To speak against My servant, against Moses?”

The issue wasn’t accountability here – it was recognition. Leaders, like all believers, MUST be accountable to others – it is a part of God’s Word and it is a requirement.

• Proverbs 27:17 “As Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

• Matthew 18:15-17 (ESV): “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

• Galatians 6:1-2 (ESV): “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

• James 5:16 (ESV): “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

The issue was RECOGNITION and PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE in the ministry, as well as the personality and personal prejudices of people. Maybe Miriam didn’t like the fabric and color choices Zipporah put in Moses’ tent. Maybe she didn’t like the way Zipporah played the tambourine at the Tabernacle sing-along. Maybe she didn’t like her looks, her perfume, or her favorite joke – Who knows? The truth is that all that was a SURFACE PROBLEM. The real issue was AFFIRMATION – and Miriam and Aaron wanted MORE. They wanted the recognition they were IMPORTANT TO THE TEAM. That hunger made them critical of God’s man – when he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He didn’t choose his wife to BOTHER THEM. He didn’t get alone with God and wrestle on behalf of the people because of THEM.

Here is a very important issue: Moses was wrestling with issues before God that even his brother and sister didn’t know or fully understand. He was dealing with God on a level they had never been at – and they had little criteria to criticize him. Let’s not forget that when dealing with others – we may not know the truth of what they are going through. Leaders are called to hold their cards close.

Take for instance a time when a leader is in a devastatingly difficult meeting that really hits their heart with a tough problem. Right after that meeting they go to yet another unrelated meeting – and he or she must shake off the problems of the first meeting at the second. One of the skills of leadership that must be learned is the skill of “segmenting”. This is the ability to set aside a problem and focus on other issues, because there is more than one problem that needs complete focus and attention.

Not to become the center of attention, but merely to illustrate this truth, let me share a personal story from not long ago. One morning I had three meetings. In the first, I found out about a friend’s infidelity to their spouse and was asked for some critical counsel by wounded people, who sobbed their way through the meeting. Since they asked that I keep it absolutely secret, I counseled and prayed with them – not mentioning it to anyone else. As they left, the next appointment showed up. I was offering a Biblical explanation, as best I was able, to a woman who was being abused and needed to know what the basis of separation from their spouse could be. She wasn’t looking for a “quick fix” and the details of the situation were complex. I walked through some Biblical passages with her, and I prayed for her situation. She left, and I stopped to talk to the Lord about something I had said to my wife the night before that was bothering me. I was irritated with someone and she stumbled into the subject on a walk the night before, and I wasn’t kind in my response. I felt I hurt her, and I wanted to talk with the Lord about it. As I did, my next appointment came in – a couple looking forward to getting married. At that moment, I wasn’t particularly UP emotionally. At the same time, that wasn’t the young happy couple’s problem. “You look tired, Pastor.” They said. I tried to be funny: “No, I just didn’t use eye makeup today!” They grinned and we got busy wedding planning. The issues of earlier meetings needed to be set aside so that I could focus on their issue. Other people’s sin was NOT their problem. It is terribly important that leaders learn when to shut their mouths off, and segment the last meeting from the next one.

Moses had just come from dealing with God on the issues of complaint. We cannot know how long between that event, and this one, other than the word “then” at the beginning of the passage. The point is that when we encounter someone, we have to remember that we may not see the real place they are at inside. We need to keep that in mind before we pounce on them.

• I am speaking to the husband who comes home critical about housekeeping to a wife that has dealt with a stubborn child all day and wants adult conversation. She wants to be recognized for her hard fought battle at lunch with the flying Gerber products. She wants to be told she is beautiful when she couldn’t get time to fix her hair without their child removing all the eggs from the fridge.

• I am passing this reminder to you BEFORE you go into the line at the “customer service” counter of the local store to complain. My aunt worked the Sears complaint counter while on chemotherapy for the cancer that claimed her life. People were rude, and sometimes crude about problems that by anyone’s count would pale in comparison to the ones she was facing.

You don’t know another person’s “inner demons” (poetically, I mean) or distresses, so dial back the tongue a bit. Speaking of “bits” – some of us need to get one to bridle our complaining voice.

Second, there was the powerful symbol given to Miriam – because she apparently was the more vocal participant in the criticism of Moses.

Numbers 12:9 So the anger of the LORD burned against them and He departed. 10 But when the cloud had withdrawn from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. As Aaron turned toward Miriam, behold, she was leprous. 11 Then Aaron said to Moses, “Oh, my lord, I beg you, do not account this sin to us, in which we have acted foolishly and in which we have sinned. 12 “Oh, do not let her be like one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother’s womb!”

Miriam needed a seven day lesson – so God provided one. Aaron needed a graphic reminder that God had a unique call for his brother, and Aaron wasn’t supposed to feed or field complaints for him. As soon as God struck Miriam, Aaron didn’t go to God – but to Moses. Under the complaint was the recognition that Moses really WAS on a different plane in his walk with God. Aaron sought Moses’ help, so Moses dropped to his knees before God.

The Results of their Sin (Numbers 12:13-16)

There is a price to be paid for sin – and sinners brings the price on more than just themselves. YOUR choice isn’t just about YOU – it is about those around you as well. Miriam’s need for affirmation had consequences that weren’t JUST about her skin – though that was no picnic either!

First, it grieved God’s leader – Moses fell down broken before the Lord (12:13). The situation caused Moses to misunderstand God’s hand. People who aren’t self-focused aren’t so easily rocked by critical voices – and Moses was a humble man. He hurt for his sister, and his brother.

Numbers 12:13 Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, “O God, heal her, I pray!” 14 But the LORD said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days outside the camp, and afterward she may be received again.”

You have to be a little bit impressed with the selfless nature of the man here, don’t you? Few of us take criticism so well – but Moses developed thick skin under the Sinai sun. He wasn’t given to reaction BEFORE MEN – he left that to his relationship with God. He didn’t float above the earth and he wasn’t always patient – but he more often reacted rashly BEFORE GOD than in the presence of the other Israelites. God wasn’t more distant because of Moses’ tough words with the Holy One – quite the opposite. The most severe punishments to Moses came as a result of his bad behavior in front of others – not his private arguments with God.

God would rather hear your honest complaints before Him than watch you offer them to others around you. He wants you to PRAY when you are hurt, not seek to ease your pain through drawing others into it. That may become necessary, but it is not the primary response God is looking for.

Grieving the godly is one of the prices of sin in the body. When we don’t walk with God, we make trouble for others – whether we thought about that or not.

Second, it stopped the move of God’s people – nobody moved for a week. They were frozen from progress in their journey because of one person’s mouth, and another person’s ear.

Numbers 12: 15 So Miriam was shut up outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on until Miriam was received again. 16 Afterward, however, the people moved out from Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.

Our sin can stop the forward momentum of many. Complaints and gossip can stall out a work for God. People who need to be rescued from darkness may be eternally hurt because we distracted the work from outreach to explanation. We can so easily get distracted on “style of worship” or some minutia of theological difference that we become ineffective as a body to move forward.

God takes our words seriously, and we cannot forget that! We need to be so very careful about how we use our mouths.

Our words set a tone in the hearts of others. Let me close with this illustration: A young girl who was writing a paper for school came to her father and asked, “Dad, what is the difference between anger and annoyance?” The father replied, “It is mostly a matter of degree. Let me show you what I mean.” With that the father went to the telephone and dialed a number at random. To the man who answered the phone, he said, “Hello, is Melvin there?” The man answered, “There is no one living here named Melvin. Why don’t you learn to look up numbers before you dial?” “See,” said the father to his daughter. “That man was not a bit happy with our call. He was probably very busy with something and we annoyed him. Now watch….” The father dialed the number again. “Hello, is Melvin there?” asked the father. “Now look here!” came the heated reply. “You just called this number and I told you that there is no Melvin here! You’ve got lot of guts calling again!” The receiver slammed down hard. The father turned to his daughter and said, “You see, that was anger. Now I’ll show you what annoyance means.” He dialed the same number, and when a violent voice roared, “Hello!” The father calmly said, “Hello, this is Melvin. Have there been any calls for me?” (sermon central illustrations –submitted by Pastor Jimmy Haile).

Benjamin Franklin once wrote: “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.” It is possible that you have complained once or twice in your life… or this week… or before you arrived this morning? We seem to live in a world designed for our convenience, and filled with our complaints. What is happening to us? For many of us, the problem is simple – it is a MARGIN problem. Dr. Richard Swenson wrote a book in 2004 that sold hundreds of thousands of copies called simply: Margin. The byline on the front of the book read: “Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial and Time Resources to Overloaded Lives.” I bought the book a few years ago, as I was studying stress and its effects on marriage and family. It opens this way:

“The conditions of modern-day living devour margin. If you are homeless, we send you to a shelter. If you are penniless, we offer you food stamps. If you are breathless, we connect you to oxygen. But if you are margin-less, we give you one more thing to do…Margin-less is being thirty minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were twenty minutes late getting out of the bank, because you were ten minutes late dropping the kids off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station – and you forgot your wallet. Margin, on the other hand, is having breath left at the top of the staircase, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of adolescence.

Margin-less is the baby crying and the phone ringing at the same time; margin is Grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Margin-less is being asked to carry a load five pounds heavier than you can lift; margin is a friend to carry half the burden. Margin-less is not have time to finish the book you are reading on stress; margin is having the time to read it twice.

Margin-less is fatigue; margin is energy. Margin-less is red ink; margin is black ink. Margin-less is hurry; margin is calm. Margin-less is anxiety; margin is security. Margin-less is culture; margin is counter-culture. Margin-less is the disease of the new millennium; margin is its cure.”

Most of us understand exactly what Dr. Swenson was writing about. We live in a time when bleeding ulcers and irritable colons are becoming commonplace – and we cannot seem to slow life down and set up the systems necessary to deal with the constant onslaught of hassles. When we are stressed to the limit, we find ourselves complaining. Sometimes we even turn to Heaven with a bitter heart. Yet, not all complaints are a reflection of a bad heart, or a struggle with evil. Sometimes even the best of us become overworked, and overburdened – and the cloth of life wears thin.

I deliberately broke the teaching of Numbers 11 into two lessons, because the passage contains two distinct kinds of complaints. In our last lesson, we highlighted the complaints that came from a heart that didn’t trust God – a believer that failed to understand the goodness of God in their daily life. In this lesson, I want to highlight a believer that was beat down – overburdened and in serious need of a time of “honest praise”. Honest praise is the ability to empty ourselves before God and let Him build up what has broken inside us. Here is the key…

Key Principle: Not all complaints are the same. The heart they come from changes the response we get. Those out of a cold heart toward God, block God’s work in and through us because of our self-centered spirit. He withdraws His blessing and stops teaching us. Yet, when we crumble under the load of real ministry– it is a different story. God offers new resources and new instruction.

On the surface, all complaints may look the same – but they really aren’t. There may be similarities, but that doesn’t mean they are truly the same. Look at yourself in the mirror. Now look at a chimpanzee picture from a local zoo. You get the idea…

How complaints are similar

In our last study, we noted the first mentioned complaints that got an answer from the heavens were about the discomfort of the journey (11:1-3). The people were about eight miles into the journey, and they began to harangue God about discomfort. Because the sound of complaining is about something that hurts us or makes us uncomfortable – it may seem like all complaints are alike. On closer inspection, we noted in our last study the people were leaving the “domain of the gods of Egypt” and were now forced to show trust to the God of Abraham for the trip. These were complaints that assumed God could not do something, that doubted His character – and Heaven viewed those harshly. Next, when the people complained about the conditions –they again were complaining about the character of God. At first glance it appears the people complained about the MENU, but on closer inspection, they asked WHO will feed us – for they were complaining about the CHEF above. Their complaints were doubts of God’s goodness and God’s ability.

Yet, there were other complaints in the text that we did NOT address – those from Moses himself…

A different kind of complaint

Moses offered complaints about the workload to God, and God did not rain down fire from heaven. My question is “Why?” What was different about the complaining voice of Moses?

Look at the text again in Numbers 11:10 “Now Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, each man at the doorway of his tent; and the anger of the LORD was kindled greatly, and Moses was displeased.

The complaint of Moses to God came from the painful sound of whining and complaining in others. He wasn’t telling God about the conditions, but about the people. The SINS OF OTHERS became the weight on his heart. He was “made MISERABLE” (the word “displeases is Ra’, or evil) by the sounds of the camp. His complaint wasn’t the food or the chef- it was a complaint that the work was TOO HARD for him – he lacked the resources to deal with the problems.

Every believer will face what Moses faced – a sense of overwhelming need and limited self. People can sin faster than we can sort it all out. One lie becomes six while we are dealing with the effects of the first. Gossip can light up phone lines, even when the substance is flatly false or the details mangle the original intent of the story. I don’t have a way to illustrate this more vividly than this: Recently I spent significant resources of time explaining that I wasn’t leaving Grace Church or the ministry – simply because of a story of another Pastor at another church. Gossip flew about, and my name got attached to situations I had no knowledge of, let alone participation in. The bottom line was this: a fire was set by tongues, and resources were needed to put that fire out. I began answering inquiries and making it clear that lines were crossed in communication. I tried to do it with humor, and even that backfired a few times.

Note that Numbers 11:10 made clear that God wasn’t happy with what He heard either. He understood the burden of Moses, and let Moses learn to take his hurt to God…

Numbers 11:11 So Moses said to the LORD, “Why have You been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people on me? 12 “Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’? 13 “Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me, saying, ‘Give us meat that we may eat!’ 14 “I alone am not able to carry all this people, because it is too burdensome for me. 15 “So if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness.”

On first glance, Moses words sound pretty bad– don’t they? He sounds like he is accusing God of dumping people on his lap, and then sticking him with the role of provider. Yet, there is a difference. If we don’t rush past this passage, we will see it, and in the process pick up some vital lessons about an overburdened life. Let me suggest FOUR LESSONS:

Lessons for the Overburdened Life

Lesson One: There is a place we can take the pain of life.

Verse 11 simply says “So Moses said to the LORD”. Note the word at the beginning SO. Because problems overtake us, there is a God-given response. Moses knew it – it was to fall before God. Our Maker is NOT worried that He won’t have all the answers we need. Remember this: “God believes in me; therefore, my situation is never hopeless.” ’We are allowed and heartily encouraged to bring our complaints to God, if we recognize Who God is. Moses didn’t LIKE the position he was in – it was painful and disappointing. At the same time, SHARING SORROW makes half a sorrow. We are designed to feel weight lift when we verbalize it – even if the conditions don’t change in that instant. Sometimes talking a problem through helps us to work through the issue. Often, when we verbalize a complaint to God, we – maybe for the very first time – can hear how dumb we sound! Don’t lose track, though, of the point. There is a place to take our pain – and God will hear us. Complaining voices are often people in desperate need of an extended prayer time. Because of that, I want to deliberately encourage you to get on your knees and watch the burdens get lighter.

Lesson Two: Straight talk to God about our feelings is what God wants to hear.

Verse 11 continues with questions of Moses: ” “Why have You been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people on me?” Look at the two questions. The first one is not quantitative – it is emotional. Why have you placed me in a position that seems beyond my ability to deal with? This is an important question because many believers have been improperly taught God’s Word.

People misquote God on the issue of TROUBLE all the time. They claim that God promised never to put them in a situation they cannot handle. That is flatly untrue. What the Bible consistently says is this: 1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” This gets pushed into statements like ‘God will never give you more than you can handle’. The basis for such interpretation is this: the term peirázō originally meant either test or tempt. One Greek lexicon used for study (found in Biblos.com) of the New Testament notes: “Context alone determines which sense is intended, or if both apply simultaneously.”

What is the context of the statement of 1 Corinthians 10:13? Look at the verses just before it: “6 Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, “THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT AND DRINK, AND STOOD UP TO PLAY.” 8 Nor let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. 9 Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents. 10 Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”

Let me say it clearly: God didn’t promise to keep you from any circumstance you cannot handle.

In fact, the truth is the opposite – “Without Me, you can do nothing!” the Savior said in John 15. If we could pull off life without God’s power, without His presence and without His purposes – we wouldn’t need Him. We can’t do it, and God didn’t promise it. Let us pause for a moment and remember: Life is too big for us. It is too hard for us. We cannot do it alone, but as Paul reminded the Philippians “we can do all things through Christ who empowers us.” IF YOU FEEL OVER YOUR HEAD, YOU ARE IN A PERFECT POSITION TO TAKE GOD SERIOUSLY.

Stop thinking that you should be able to “do life” as an adult on your own. You don’t have the power, and you don’t have the ability. Get over yourself and get into Him! He will provide an escape from temptation, but will NOT make it possible for you to accomplish your life mission apart from constant, desperate, and thorough leaning on HIM.

Lesson Three: We learn that PRAISE is a word about intimacy – not just a “feel good time”.

Listen to the words of Moses. Can you hear exhaustion and desperation bordering on collapse? How can we speak of “praise” in such a context? He said: Numbers 11:12 “Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’?

Moses appears to be laying down some heavy complaints – but he is actually praising God. The ancient Hebrew vocabulary included seven different words that are all translated in our Bible as “praise”. One of the most common ones, “tehillah” is a word that implies to “pour myself out” before God – often in a quiet and reflective way, or perhaps even through tears and pain. “Yadah” implies that I will use my hands in clapping, “barach” is pronounced praise with a strong or loud noise. “Halal” and Shebach are “boisterous boasts” in the Lord, showy praise for God’s goodness and character. The point: Not all praise is happy. Some of it is an honest leveling with God as to where we are in life’s journey. God doesn’t get angry at us – even when we are a bit dramatic and over the top. Remember, from where He sits, none of our problems are particularly hard to solve – no matter what they appear to be to us. The reason the Psalmist could “continually praise” the Lord is that he didn’t define all praise as happy.

Moses pointed out that the people WERE NOT HIS. In this he is exactly correct – they are God’s people. Moses pointed out that God made the promises to the fathers – not him. Again, he was correct. When our hearts are broken and our lives are stressed out, we must remember that the burden of life is not ours to carry, but rather ours to marvel as God carries it all. We must be faithful to serve our one and only Master, but we must not fall victim to OWNING the work. My children are not my own – they are His. I am a steward – nothing more. I must remember that my wife, my cars, my home, all that I have –also belongs exclusively to Him. I am the manager, but He is the owner. When something happens that I cannot and do not control – the owner knows. When I do not follow through on responsibility – the owner also knows. No matter what it looks like, no matter who blames me – God knows what IS my fault, and what is not, what IS my responsibility – and what is someone else’s improper boundary.

Let us rehearse this aloud: If I am a steward, I must live this life seeking God’s approval, and doing God’s bidding. I should not own responsibilities HE does not give me, but I must also not shirk the responsibilities He HAS assigned to me. Life is simpler when I recognize WHOSE approval I ultimately seek.

Lesson Four: We grow to recognize that as we lay things out before God, we reveal the real problems at the heart of our complaints.

Moses needed resources, and Moses desired assistance. He was a man in desperate need of a good team of ministry around him. He said: Numbers 11:13 “Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me, saying, ‘Give us meat that we may eat!’ 14 “I alone am not able to carry all this people, because it is too burdensome for me. 15 “So if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness.”

As he verbalized his feeling before God, it became perfectly clear – he wasn’t trying to take on more than his job – he was unfairly matched to the size of God’s appointed responsibility and was throwing himself on the mercy of God to get him through the day. If you have every found yourself in this position, you know there are some good things that can come from it. It is a humbling experience, and God gives grace to the humble. It is a clarifying experience, and good leaders need to learn to be clear about the problems in order to affect solutions. Many will find symptoms of the problem, but the leader needs to carefully follow the symptom trails all the way back to the actual problem. Time pouring out before God helps to set it all in front of both God and I, so He can do His work in and through me.

These four lessons are helpful, but the passage offers more. It pulls back the curtain on God’s response, and that is encouraging!

How did God respond to a believer who was honestly broken by the load?

Response #1: God assigned the part that Moses should complete.

16 The LORD therefore said to Moses, “Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and their officers and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you.

God didn’t simply wave His hand and make the problem go away – that isn’t His way. God instructed Moses how to respond, and gave him an opportunity to participate in the answer to the problem. God let Moses help build a system that would alleviate the struggle in the future. He added to Moses ability by TAKING AWAY some of his control and participation. Moses gave up control in exchange for peace. Micromanagers cannot build teams – because they need full control. Disciple makers and mentors need to be able to surrender parts of the work to others – or they will burn out.

That isn’t as intuitive as it seems. The spontaneous response of our modern culture is to add detail to our lives – more choices, more options, more commitments, more purchases, more jobs. God did the opposite for Moses – and TOOK HIM OUT of the path. True, Moses had to gather the men together. Yet, after that, God took work OFF of him through this process. The key was that God gave Moses the choice to obey and simplify or fully control and keep all the stress.

Let me ask you a question: Are you overburdened because you won’t give up control of everything?

There are two truths that must be carefully pondered about modern life. First, Humans have a limited capacity for meaningful productivity, and second, few modern men and women seem to know when they are reaching their capacity. We commit to too much, want too many options and live in too much complexity. We sleep too little and waste too much time in meaningless entertainments that we cannot even remember. Tell me how many TV shows you can even recall the next day? For most modern people, there is a nostalgic longing for simpler times…One of the great secrets of days long past was that in fewer choices is less anxiety. I am not arguing that we don’t like having greater selection – but the higher level of choice brings with it greater stress.

Think of driving down a street in a nearby small town. The houses are set back from the street with green lawns. The sidewalks run beside both sides of the lane. You can drive thirty-five miles an hour and still see the picture of the lost dog stuck to the side of the telephone pole… Now put yourself in southern California on an eight lane highway with two overpasses – one above the other. Signage on the lower overpass indicates the various destinations of each lane – and the choices are many – but so is the stress level. Cars are whizzing by and you are trying to figure out what lane you need to make your way into. You have more choices, and they all sound exciting. At the same time, you are more likely to arrive at your destination frazzled and undone.

One of the biggest reasons we have too little margin in life is our own inability to choose what we SHOULD be a part of, and to say “NO!” to things that we should pass by on the highway of life. For some of us, we need to be warned: Busyness can become its own addiction – but addicts aren’t peaceful people by nature. Perhaps we need to look at the part God assigned to US, and let others do the other part.

Response #2: God promised a real and tangible answer to the backbreaking load – it was found in other people.

17 “Then I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit who is upon you, and will put Him upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you will not bear it all alone….24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD. Also, he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and stationed them around the tent.

God loves TEAM WORK. He multiplies the strength of a work by dividing the work among many. He didn’t chide Moses for saying the work was too great – He spread the work out. He took the load and re-distributed the weight with a system that would be more enduring. As we think about Moses with all his history with God and his great strength of character, forged in experiences with God’s power and enlightened with God’s Spirit within, we need to be warned – No person can tolerate ever-escalating overload without eventually feeling the pain of the weight. Dr. Swenson enumerated the levels of modern American stress:

• We live in a time with change overload – for millennia change was painfully slow – but now whole nations are felled in a single day. That makes the moves of any government administration more stressful, because we don’t know how far we can fall how fast.

• We live in a time of choice overload – in 1980 the average supermarket has 12,000 items; in 2010 that number averaged in excess of 30,000. There are now 186 different breakfast cereal choices alone. Satellite TV offered you 1,100 movie choices last month.

• We live in a time of commitment overload – most of us have too many relationships and too many responsibilities to do any well. We take too many courses, make too many appointments and try to be the solution to too many problems.

• We live in a time of debt overload – our whole country is awash in red ink.

• We live in a time of decision overload – each year we have more decisions to make, with less time to make them. This isn’t only about purchases, it is about health care plans, retirement options, real estate purchases, tax implications.. and that is just getting started.

• We won’t even detail fatigue overload, hurry overload, information overload, media overload, noise overload, personal interaction overload, possession overload, technology overload, traffic overload and work overload.

Even though stress and overload are everywhere in our modern world – it shows in different ways in different people. Moses internalized the weight and cried out to God to kill him – a sure sign of depression brought on by inner stress. Others show it in anxiety, outbursts of hostility and blame, or more subtle resentments. Overload turns work and fellow workers into the enemy – even if we love what we do! Part of God’s solution was the TEAM that Moses formed. Build one in your life. Cut out what you are doing that God hasn’t called you to do, and let others take a whack at it. Don’t be lazy – be intentional. Try doing less, but doing it better. Could it be that you aren’t HANDING OFF some work that should be someone else’s to complete?

Response #3: God offered Divine assistance to the men who were following Him.

God wasn’t done with the formation of the team – He did something that made the whole work hum… He empowered all of them with His Spirit.

25 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him; and He took of the Spirit who was upon him and placed Him upon the seventy elders. And when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do it again. 26 But two men had remained in the camp; the name of one was Eldad and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them (now they were among those who had been registered, but had not gone out to the tent), and they prophesied in the camp.

For me there would be no greater joy than to see others learning to do the work, and empowered by God to do it well! I LIVE for such a day! The most exciting part of ministry is that God has a gifting in each of you, and He can energize you to do what no one else can do! Moses shared that sense of ministry, I know he did! How do I know? Keep reading!

27 So a young man ran and told Moses and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” 28 Then Joshua the son of Nun, the attendant of Moses from his youth, said, “Moses, my lord, restrain them.” 29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’S people were prophets, that the LORD would put His Spirit upon them!” 30 Then Moses returned to the camp, both he and the elders of Israel.

Moses was excited (not jealous) that others had God’s Spirit. God took Moses into the work that was too big for him, so that God could work on Moses’ heart and show him His faithfulness and inexhaustible power. God held him tightly, and let him cry out when he couldn’t handle the pressure. He granted Moses more margin in his life, because he brought his problem to the Lord honestly, and poured himself out before God.

Not all complaints are the same. The heart they come from changes the response we get.

Those out of a cold heart toward God, block God’s work in and through us because of our self-centeredness spirit. He withdraws His blessing and stops teaching us. Yet, when we crumble under the load of real ministry– it is a different story. God offers new resources and new instruction.

In 1961, the year of my birth, John Steinbeck wrote his last novel, and borrowed the title from Shakespeare’s speech of Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun [or son] of York.” Steinbeck called his novel The Winter of Our Discontent. Though it is true that many Americans were deeply disappointed by the work, feeling it lacked the quality of “The Grapes of Wrath”, the Swedish Academy awarded Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. In letters to personal friends after its publication, Steinbeck claimed he wrote the novel to address the moral degeneration of American culture in the 1950s and 1960s. I could describe the story of Ethan Allen Hawley, and his struggle from innocence to moral decay – but those who are familiar with the times of the 1960’s don’t really need me to make an allegory about the decay – you remember it. We are still suffering from some of the rebellion of the era. It reshaped America.

I mention Steinbeck’s story as a bridge back to a much older story of discontent. This one comes from the pages of the Bible, and is tucked into Numbers 11. The story of the readying of the people to go from the mountain of the Law into the wilderness wandering and eventually the Promised Land unfolds over ten chapters of the writing. We left off the story with the “Wagon’s Ho!” moment. In the intensity of the heat by day, the discomfort of constant camping at night, the people wore through every thread of the garment of civility in short order. No sooner were the people in the desert on the journey, and Moses recorded the “season of discontent” that settled on the traveling hoards of ex-slave Israelites. The text offers a window to watch the people in a variety complaining situations.

I am going to deliberately break the teaching of Numbers 11 into two lessons, because there are two distinct kinds of complaints in the passage – and they need to each be addressed separately. In this lesson, we want to highlight the complaints that come from a heart that doesn’t trust God – a believer that has failed to understand the goodness of God in their daily life. In the next, I want to highlight a believer that is beat down – overburdened and in need a time of “honest praise”. Honest praise is the ability to empty ourselves before God and let Him build up what has broken inside us. Here is the key…

Key Principle: Not all complaints are the same. The heart they come from changes the response we get from Heaven.

Those out of a cold heart toward God, block God’s work in and through us because of our self-centered spirit. He withdraws His blessing and stops teaching us. Yet, when we crumble under the load of real ministry– it is a different story. God offers new resources and new instruction.

Today we are examining the complaints seeping from a COLD and UN-TRUSTING HEART.

The first mentioned complaints were about the discomfort of the journey get an answer from the heavens.

Numbers 11:1 Now the people became like those who complain of adversity in the hearing of the LORD; and when the LORD heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. 2 The people therefore cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the LORD and the fire died out. 3 So the name of that place was called Taberah, because the fire of the LORD burned among them.

Some people have been convinced that life on the journey to the Promised Land was designed to be easy – and they find out very quickly in their life that is not correct. God didn’t create an air conditioned envelope through the desert, nor did he make the ground soft under the sleeping areas under the tent. Physical ease isn’t supposed to be a guaranteed part of the package in your walk with God.

Three issues concerning the complaining:

First, the people became fixated on a constant spirit of complaint and became verbally unrelenting and thankless. It was one thing to have a momentary complaint, but quite another to become perpetually negative, discouraged, and mouthy. Note the phrase: “the people became like those who complain of adversity”. What a weird phrase! The Hebrew letter “kaph” placed before a word usually adds the quality of a simile – it is “like” something. Though that is usually the way to interpret it, it is not ALWAYS the way to interpret the additional letter. Here, the translators said they people became LIKE those, because they seem to have missed an idiom, or common expression. To make it clearer, let me mention another place where this idea occurs. In Hosea 5, the writer claims: “The princes of Judah have become like those who move a boundary; On them I will pour out My wrath like water.” This was a poetic way of saying they were crooks – taking lands not purchased by moving the fences. The expression “to become like” was a simple idiom that they were acting out as those who had perfected the task – and that is what it meant in Numbers 11. The people were acting out like one who was moaning on the stretcher after the war, awaiting death. They cried as one who faced their death with no hope of survival and no relenting of pain. The people saw the road ahead and evaluated the change of landscape as a death sentence. The believer cannot judge safety by appearances. God isn’t only with those whose lives are prosperous and convenient. Complaints come from a dissatisfaction with circumstances – and many of those circumstances come ultimately from God. A complaint about the conditions of the walk can be a veiled complaint about the goodness of God.

Do you truly believe that God has been good to you, and IS being good to you? It is no small question that can be glibly answered – it is a serious and piercing look into the center of our own hearts.

Second, the people seemed to express less trust in God’s presence than in their old systems of security. Let me explain. In the fourth century, the commentator St. Jerome offered the idea that they complained because of the length of the way ahead. Based on the note from Numbers 10:33, the Israelite camp had not progressed in the journey more than eight miles when this problem developed. It is highly unlikely they were weary from all the travels – they hadn’t gone that far! Far more likely was the sense that they were leaving the out lands of Egyptian camps and moving out from under the influence of Egypts travel routes – and that was scary. The issue appears to be SECURITY in the direction they were heading. The people angered the Lord because they saw Egypt as more secure than His presence. The believer is always safest following the Lord – that is the very essence of safety. Believers are not safe when removed from trouble – they are safe when moved close to their Lord in obedience.

Do you try to “read the tea leaves of circumstance” to judge what is right and secure? As the believer grows, his dependence on circumstance is lessened – because his dependence on God’s promises are greater.

Third, it isn’t clear that there wasn’t some specific occasion that brought it all about. In fact, that may have been the case. Custom of the time dictated that leaving the territory of a nation was cause to pause at the border and remember their gods and cultic practices. For that very reason Jeroboam set up calves at the extremities of the northern Kingdom when the northern confederation of tribes broke away from Judah. The Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar can be translated “Nebo, protect the standing stones on my border”. Remember, the people were leaving the edges of encampments and roadways that were used by Egypt in copper mining transports. This may have caused some to want to stop and observe the rituals and superstitions common to the time. Leaving without a sacrifice may have felt like some people react to walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, or tripping over a black cat. God’s presence is REAL and superstition is NOT – so God doesn’t want to be compared to it. God’s one and only requirement of His people is to listen to His Word and take Him seriously. When we don’t, we show we aren’t interested in following Him beyond the immediate fix to whatever mess we have gotten ourselves into. Superstitions are expressions of trust in hocus pocus – not appropriate for the child of God. Pagan rituals aren’t supposed to be used to satisfy us – God’s presence and our tight grasp to His hand are to become our only security as we move out.

Have you learned to celebrate God’s rich love and unchanging goodness when circumstances seem to look bleak? When the doctor’s news in NOT good, or the economic forecast appears to be devastating – is God still trustworthy in your eyes? Mature believers leave the promises of Heaven for AFTER THIS LIFE and don’t expect them to be in this life NOW.

God’s response to the complaining:

There are those who read about the “Taberah lightning sound and light show” experience and see a tiny drop of malice or even cruelty in God’s eyes – and they are wrong. God wasn’t messing with the people by sending the lightning that started the fire on the edge of the camp. Troubles are often God’s warning signs that something isn’t right – and we need to back away from the edge of whatever we are engaging in. The hint of what God was doing may be found when the text says: “His anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.”

Along with the Israelites, there were others that had been swallowed up by the enslavement of the Egyptians that also went with them. Though we cannot say definitively, it is highly likely they found their place on the edge of the camp – out where the lightning fall started the fire. Be careful how you read the text – it doesn’t say PEOPLE were harmed – only property. If it is true that some of the complaint was particularly related to ritual – the spurring to do it may have come from the “mixed multitude” that came along with Israel, mentioned in places like Exodus 12:38. That is why commentators like Jamieson note: “It is worthy of notice, however, that the discontent seems to have been confined to the extremities of the camp, where, in all likelihood, “the mixed multitude” [see on [71]Ex 12:38] had their station.”

If God wasn’t being cruel and shooting lightning bolts like stories of Zeus after a drinking party on Mt. Olympus, what was He doing? God was sending trouble as a WARNING to quell the call to be involved in cultic practices that would defile Israel. He was squashing the voices of those who would have quickly drowned out the voice of Moses as leader. God often does more dramatic displays when the work is NEW, because people need to be sufficiently warned. Do you recall the body bags that carried out Ananias and Sapphira from the meeting in Acts 5? God hasn’t dropped every liar in church since (thankfully!), but He did early on – to push out pretense in the fledgling movement. Often, people who don’t yet know God’s love, respond to His power. They learn His clout before they feel His caring. These people needed to know that the parting of the water wasn’t the only time God would drop onto the scene and make Himself known. The point is that God wasn’t being CRUEL, He was guarding the believers and showing the bulge in his jacket pocket – making sure those who doubted His ability saw the edges of the weaponry available to Him in short order.

Herein is the warning: Don’t mess with God. He isn’t desperate, a pining lover so lonely that He will sit and weep, waiting for your call. He is a powerful, majestic and whole God – Who has graciously invited you to be used of Him. Respond to His love and you will see His power as helpful, not threatening.

The second mentioned complaints that got Heaven’s response were about the menu.

There are four important observations we can readily make about the problem of the menu:

First, it appears to be again linked to those who joined Israel for the journey – a distinct group of those who were not believers that were quietly tucked into the group.

11:4 The rabble (hasaph-soof’) who were among them had greedy desires; and also the sons of Israel wept again and said, “Who will give us meat to eat?

Have you ever noticed how a wave of discontent falls when complainers are allowed to air their critique of a situation for very long? Complaining, like yawning, is contagious. We can’t help it. When all the problems are mentioned over and over, they seem to grow even bigger than they truly are. They overwhelm us. They victimize us. They can even distract us into inaction about our own lives and responsibilities. Isn’t it much easier to blame the President for my plight than my own laziness? Why not make it Congress’ fault that I didn’t keep the oil in my car changed, or consistently discipline my children? Information can help us, but over analysis and pounding away at problems I cannot solve tends to paralyze us to the inaction of a victim. Perhaps that is why the “24/7” news cycle has seemed, in my view, to raise the depression rate among the well informed.

Note their question: “WHO will give us something different?” It is like they were saying to Israel: “Your God seems to be a bland diet vegetarian. That’s great to, you know, stay alive and all…but it isn’t very tasty and it isn’t very meaty!” That is the heart of the world’s complaint – they want to be able to CHANGE GOD TO THEIR LIKING. They want a God who allows them to have whatever they want to have – but then fixes the problems that are caused by their own self-indulgence. This was NOT just an attack on the menu – it was an attack on the CHEF. God was in their cross hairs, and He knew it. The people were naively drawn into the complaints, without the maturity in their walk and faith to see what the puppet masters of complaint were really saying. They didn’t just want meat – they wanted the ability to CONTROL GOD. They went after the WHO in the statement – not simply the WHAT. I have watched many naïve believers join the ranks of an evil agenda because they could not see through the work of the enemy inside it. Today, large numbers of evangelicals are standing on the wrong side of moral issues out of a naivety that they are being played.

When I grew up in New Jersey, I remember the rise of casino gambling. I recall the commercials as nuns, priests, community leaders, and those who helped the poor were put on TV to convince us that Atlantic City would get much help for the poor if we would vote for casino gambling. It was the moral and responsible thing to do – to get money for our schools and our poor. Drive there today, and you will see MORE POOR, and many elderly that were dispossessed from their homes because of the rise in taxes based on property values that skyrocketed when the casinos began buying up property. Naïve people lost their wallets to slick marketers.

Do we really believe that a lottery is the way to fund education? Do Floridians have to LOSE so that others can be educated? Is that the legacy of my generation to the next? We are naïve when we let the world determine the course of morality without relying on the truth of God’s Word.

Let’s be clear: No one in the world is offended at a God that is there to prosper us, care for us, and let us do what we want. That is the American god – the one that lets us be materialistic without sacrificial giving, hedonistic without penalty, and narcissistic without consequence. The problem is – that isn’t the true God. We made Him up. We like Him. He is nice and leaves us alone with our porn industry while we appease Him with an occasional church visit. The world wants to make a new god to replace the real one, and believers need to consistently seek the real One to stop unwittingly getting sucked into following after the latest carved rendition of Baal.

Second, the rabble called the people to focus on the life they had in the world, not the call of God to be distinct and dwell in His provisions.

11:5 “We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic, 6 but now our appetite is gone. There is nothing at all to look at except this manna.” 7 Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. 8 The people would go about and gather it and grind it between two millstones or beat it in the mortar, and boil it in the pot and make cakes with it; and its taste was as the taste of cakes baked with oil. 9 When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna would fall with it.

Look at the recitation of old Egyptian menus: fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic… Yum!

Can’t you hear them?: “We will be serving today a lovely little appetizer salads of cucumbers, followed by a nicely prepared tilapia, garnished with shavings of garlic and onion. Our light afternoon menu will be topped off with delicious, sliced melon. What a perfect meal for the desert traveler in the know.”

That is the essence of the trick of distraction – keep the believers thinking about the GOOD PARTS of their former captivity in the world. Here is the part they DIDN’T mention… WE WERE SLAVES! We ate when we were TOLD we could. We worked dawn to dusk. Taskmasters beat us and could even kill us. They abused our women without penalty – and took from the fruit of our labors without deserving it. The world would have you believe that every teen is sleeping with their date, and the people who aren’t are really awkward and lonely. They would have you believe that those who have the most money are the happiest. They produce show after show that postulates that those who walk out the door when their marriage gets tough find true happiness in the e-Harmony page with the perfect someone they have been missing all the days they were married to the shrew they found early in life.

Now hear the truth. Venereal diseases are rampant and have destroyed intimacy in countless couples. Innocence has been trashed in many a child long before they should have known how to give away their most precious parts of the heart. The big lotto winner from a few months ago is now in the morgue as they test his body for what poison the family used to eliminate him – check the news. Broken marriages have left untold damage in the hearts of millions of America’s children. A February 2012 report cited: Past statistics have shown that in the U.S. 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce. Second marriages are often more likely to end in divorce than first ones – we can’t seem to find our true love even when we spin the wheel more than once. How can I say this more clearly: Night time TV, Hollywood movies and even daytime TV are telling us LIES. Life in the world isn’t happy – it’s guilty, it’s broken, and it’s pointless. Believers that look back at their old life longingly are being suckered to re-join a losing team. A great many go on calling themselves “Christian”, but increasingly live like they used to live – and that isn’t a formula for success and victory in this life, nor hearing God’s compliment in the next one: “Well done!” Believe me, when you see Him – that will matter!

Third, the problem caught on among the Israelites. The unbelievers among them pulled them into complaining by raising discontent.

11:18 “Say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the ears of the LORD, saying, “Oh that someone would give us meat to eat! For we were well-off in Egypt.” Therefore the LORD will give you meat and you shall eat. 19 ‘You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, 20 but a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you; because you have rejected the LORD who is among you and have wept before Him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’”

Duped into forgetting the terrible bondage of a past life, even the Israelites were now mimicking the words of the complaining rabble. They were looking around and looking back – but they were looking in the wrong directions.

The believer won’t find comfort LOOKING AROUND. They will feel out of place, because they are to be growing in such a way that they learn slowly to displace the values of NOW for the standards of Heaven. Following the world’s values and living by their hungers is placing your life in the blind pilot’s hands. Seriously, if you were standing in line to get on a flight and the pilot came walking slowly up the ramp tapping his white cane and wearing dark glasses, would you get on the flight? The pit comes to both the blind leader and the blind one who holds his hand and follows him. When will we learn that only the person with the true map finds the treasure. Fakes are distractions that raise your hopes and suck away your energy.

The believer won’t find comfort in LOOKING BACK. The things of this earth are to dim more and more as he learns to look in the right directions – UP and FORWARD. The answers to a broken world lay in the coming Redeemer – and nowhere else. It doesn’t mean that I do not care for the planet – I was told to steward it. It means I don’t do it to fix the broken world – because I haven’t the power. He does, and He is coming soon!

One final observation, and look at the end of the story. God heard the revelry of gluttony and greed – and it made Him really sick.

Skip down to 11:32… The people spent all day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered ten homers) and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. 33 While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very severe plague. 34 So the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had been greedy. 35 From Kibroth-hattaavah the people set out for Hazeroth, and they remained at Hazeroth.

Often the transliterated words in the text give a glimpse of the point of the story. In this case, “Kever” is the common term for a tomb or grave. “Kibbroth” is the plural form set in a name, with a descriptive name to follow – “hattah-av-aw”. The place became a marker and memory – mentioned five times in the Bible and always referring to this place alone. In Numbers 33 and Deuteronomy 9 God reminded them of the provocation of this event. In the end, they left there and journeyed to “Chatserot” – a word for settlements or villages. The people saw God take the lives of their greedy fellows, and many died. With the weeping and bitter memory of the grave place called “Hattah-avaw” still burning in their minds, they moved from loud complaining to walking quietly to the villages, or “Chatserot”.

I can’t say this strongly enough to any believer that is open to understanding: Living the world’s values, seeking desperately the world’s approval, pressing for the world’s hungers WILL KILL YOU!

Next time, I want to address a closer look at MOSES and the complaints from an over-stressed and BROKEN HEART.

By now, I think the point is clear – Not all complaints are the same. The heart they come from changes the response we get. Those out of a cold heart toward God, block God’s work in and through us because of our self-centered spirit. He withdraws His blessing and stops teaching us. Yet, when we crumble under the load of real ministry– it is a different story. God offers new resources and new instruction.

How could I leave this passage without the one song that was written in my lifetime that captured the heart of the complaining Israelite? Keith Green wrote it, and many of you will smile, because you know it:

“So you wanna go back to Egypt, where it’s warm and secure. Are you sorry you bought the one way ticket when you thought you were sure? You wanted to live in the Land of Promise, but now it’s getting so hard. Are you sorry you’re out here in the desert, instead of your own backyard? Eating leeks and onions by the Nile. Ooh what breath, but dining out in style! Ooh, my life’s on the skids, give me the Pyramids! Well there’s nothing to do but travel, and we sure travel a lot. Cause it’s hard to keep your feet from moving when the sand gets so hot. And in the morning it’s manna hotcakes. We snack on manna all day. And they sure had a winner last night for dinner, Flaming manna soufflé. Well we once complained for something new to munch. The ground opened up and had some of us for lunch. Ooh, such fire and smoke. Can’t God even take a joke ­huh? (no!) So you wanna go back to Egypt, where old friends wait for you. You can throw a big party and tell the whole gang, That what they said was all true. And this Moses acts like a big-shot, who does he think he is. It’s true that God works lots of miracles, but Moses thinks they’re all his. Well I’m having so much trouble even now. Why’d he get so mad about that cow? (that golden cow). Moses sits rather idle, he just sits around. He just sits around and writes the Bible. Oh, Moses, put down your pen. What ­oh no, manna again? Oh, manna waffles­, manna burgers, manna bagels, fillet of manna, manna patties, manna – cotti??? How ’bout..­.ba -manna bread!”

As with most of you, I have come to deeply love music. I am moved, in particular, by the deep and rich sounds of the cello in the hands of a master. I love the intricate structure of Bach’s orchestral works, and especially the beauty and elegance of the resolutions in each piece. When I think of music, I think of the peaceful respite in my loft office, as an orchestra plays in the background to the sound of my typing. I spend many hours each week in my old well-worn chair, with the sounds of gentle classical artists without a word spoken or sung. The instruments are calming to me – and they help my attitude and demeanor as I write. The truth is, though, that not all musical instruments were made for sounds of pleasure. Some horns were deliberately created and shaped to make the signals of impending danger, directive attack, and even the deep sorrow over fallen warriors. Some bugles only play “taps”. We sometimes forget that music wasn’t only given to soothe – it is sometimes given to signal.

The same reality must be soberly applied to looking into the Bible’s pages. Talk about happy passages of Scripture, and you will draw a crowd.

Everyone wants to hear about peace, prosperity, Heaven, and hope. I know that I do! These are deep truths, and motivating realities of the Word. The problem is, they aren’t the whole picture. Along with the needed preaching of affirmation and encouragement – we need the bugle tones of caution. I am assured this is true – because the Word has major sections given to offering warning and preparatory counsel. There are significant glimpses in the Word that we are living in the time of a bitter conflict, fought in unseen places by ruthless foes. Ignoring that reality won’t help – and it will in fact place people in the middle of a “fire-fight” with little or no understanding concerning what they are facing.

Yes, because of the conditions of the spiritual war, we desperately need the whole counsel of God’s Word – with all its encouragement saddled beside the bugle bursts of warning. Why do I mention this? I am concerned as I watch and listen in our current day – because far too many followers of God are insufficiently dressed for battle, and inadequately prepared for the reality of the spiritual war zone. I am not qualified to know the complete sense of why this may be, but I truly believe at least some of the fault can be placed in pulpits, where we have not sufficiently reminded our people that we are in a time of elaborate and complex warfare. An over-simplified Bible and an ignorant Christian will do little to advance the Kingdom, and is more likely to be a casualty than a key asset in the day of battle. I say this with a heavy heart, beloved friend, for I know too many casualties.

Key Principle: God wants His followers to be diligent to watch for the enemy’s work, and to constantly acknowledge our need of His hand of protection – because we forget how much we NEED God.

Look back into the record of Numbers 10. Just as Moses and the people cleared the moorings of the various issues of direction, God addressed their specific need for preparation before movement – especially in the areas of communication and defense:

Though God is always with us, He has called upon believers to be diligent in setting up defense (10:1).

Numbers 10:1 The LORD spoke further to Moses, saying, 2 “Make yourself two trumpets of silver, of hammered work you shall make them; and you shall use them for summoning the congregation and for having the camps set out.

God understands perfectly what believers are up against, and called Moses to be prepared (10:1). Notice the passage opened with the now familiar “the Lord spoke further…” Don’t overlook that God specified the defense methods, plans and arms for the believer to be ready for attack – and they are all found in His Word. If you are young in your faith, it may do well to remind you that the opening chapters of the Bible (1-11) outline what some of my friends calls the “five major story lines of Scripture” (my thanks to James C. Martin; Doug Greenwold and Preserving Bible Times):

• God: Who He is, What He cares about.
• Adversary: Who he is, how he works, what his agenda is.
• Mutiny: What broke in man and why.
• Human Condition: Why things are the way they are now.
• Rescue: How God is taking back what the enemy has stolen away in deception.

The Bible opens with these stories not to explain the science of Creation or the methodology of how God works – but to explain that we are born into a war. Anyone who wishes to follow God must recognize that our connection to Him was broken in the Garden, and it must be re-established. The sin of the Garden is the reason for the Cross at Calvary. The Bible teaches that Jesus did NOT primarily come to be an example of self-sacrifice, but to be the one and only Lamb of God that would satisfy the mutiny of man in God’s judicial system. Though a believer has trusted in Christ, the war is not over – he just switched sides. God then reveals tools and defenses He has provided for the believer – but they must be understood, appropriated, and worn consistently. This passage is about the call to physical defense, but the physical attack is a mere echo of the truth of spiritual warfare – a relentless battle between mutineers and the God that made them.

God recognized the need to be able to call the people together without stirring the people to panic (10:2). Wise Pastors are instructing believers about warfare in a time when they are not being slammed. The believer must be ever ready to face the world, fight,] and deny the flesh, and resist the Devil. The two trumpets were fashioned by God’s plan to distinguish between the sound of muster to fight and the sound of assemble for instructions and movement. When believers don’t know how to hear the trumpets, they don’t know what to do. Either they will panic each time, assuming battle is imminent, or they will gather to assemble and show up without their arms. In many cases, they will count on their neighbor and ask what the signal means – not accepting for themselves the proper responsibility for discernment. We have whole churches today that cannot distinguish what the Word says concerning the war – and they blame Satan for acts in which he was in no way involved. They confuse irresponsible behavior with Satanic attack, and cannot really discern one trumpet from the other. They are no danger to the enemy and little asset to the Kingdom, because they cause as much confusion as they offer assistance. They don’t use the Word and the Spirit to bring them along to maturity. They remind me of the story Zig Ziglar used to tell (from See You at the Top):

Oil was discovered on some Oklahoma property belonging to an elderly Indian. All his life he had been poverty stricken, just eking out a living. But the discovery of oil had suddenly made him a very wealthy man. The first thing he bought was a very big Cadillac. He wanted the longest car in the county, so he added four spare tires on the trunk. He would dress up in his new clothes and everyday he would take his Cadillac into the hot dusty little town nearby. He wanted to see everyone and he wanted everyone to see him. He was a friendly old soul. so when he was riding through town he would turn in all directions to wave at all the people as he rolled by. Interesting enough, he never ran into anybody nor into anything. The reason for this was that directly in front of that big beautiful auto was two horses harnessed to it and pulling it. There was nothing wrong with the car’s engine. It was because the old Indian had never learned to drive it. He had never learned how to insert the key into the ignition switch and turn it on. Under the hood was 100 plus horsepower ready and willing and raring to go, but the old Indian was content to use the two horsepower hooked to the front of the car…The devil gets really happy (or as happy as a devil can get) when he can keep the believer chugging along in their Christian life on a two horse power faith level. At that rate, the spiritual progress is slowed down to a crawl, and this is what the devil is after in his warfare with us.

God set up a clear system to assess the meaning of the Warning Signals (10:3-7)

Numbers 10:3 “When both are blown, all the congregation shall gather themselves to you at the doorway of the tent of meeting.

One essential signal was set to call believers together – because God’s intent was that they hear from Him as a group – not just individually (10:3). The design of God always included individual responsibility before Him – as in the deliberate obedience to His Word and seeking of Him in individual prayer. At the same time, there was the requirement of corporate responsibility among believers. We were never allowed – not in the old economy or in the present one – to simply follow God without attaching ourselves to others. Israel was to worship together, share in festival life together, and seek God’s blessing together as a nation. In that same way, God’s church was called to assemble, learn, serve, and grow together. Weak believers walk alone. The enemy knows how easily they can be knocked out of service. It is for no less than this reason that the early writer to the Messianic followers of the first century wrote in Hebrews:

Hebrews 10:19 Having therefore, brothers, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20 By a new and living way, which he has consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; 21 And having an high priest over the house of God; 22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) 24 And let us consider one another to provoke to love and to good works: 25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as you see the day approaching.

Did you see the progression of the thought?

We have new boldness because Jesus paid for our entrance to the Holy of Holies with His blood – and there is no fear of separation from God anymore (10:19-20). We have a High Priest that bids us blessing (10:21).

What should we do with this?
• We must draw near to God – walk in with hearts clean and hungry to be near Him (10:22).
• We must be bold about what God has done in us and for us (10:23).
• We must help EACH OTHER with prompting, encouragement and service (10:24).
• We must be diligent about assembling together – especially as the day of Jesus’ return gets close (10:25).

Our call is STILL to assemble together, and to learn, serve, encourage, and walk through life together. With the many churches available to us, in many cases what it has done is water down the ability of believers to hold each other accountable, and expect Christian behavior from one another. If people misbehave in one church, they simply go to another, with no desire to reconcile what they have done to the cause of Christ – and both churches are weakened – the one he left AND the one he brought himself into.

Sometimes God wanted just the leaders to get together to handle issues – so they had their own assembly signal.

Numbers 10:4 “Yet if only one is blown, then the leaders, the heads of the divisions of Israel, shall assemble before you.

From Genesis to Revelation, we have seen that God calls, raises, nurtures, and protects leaders. They have different responsibilities that the followers. They are charged with greater demands to be both right with God and an example to the flock. The warning of James rings in my ears in the old King James language I learned as a child…”Stop being so many teachers, for theirs is the greater condemnation.” James argued the responsibility of Godliness is heavier on the teacher of God’s truths – and I have often thought about that. It haunts me. I sometimes want to drop the pretense of being any different and punch someone who makes me mad. That’s the truth! The problem is that my name is not my own. My name is tacked on to YOUR name at Grace, and onto Jesus’ name in Heaven. If I punch someone, you will pay some of the price, and that isn’t right. So, for the moment, I won’t punch you.

Here is my point: it isn’t wrong to hold leaders to a higher standard than we hold followers. God has made it clear in His Word that leaders must be circumspect, and can be disqualified. We should not be hungry to tear apart anyone, but we cannot gloss over leadership responsibilities to walk with special care. None of us are perfect – I assure you – but leaders are more culpable than followers.

Recently, a fellow minister was counseling someone and crossed an emotional line – and later a physical one – in the counseling relationship. Not only is the action wrong, but the crossed lines show a misunderstanding of the role of a true counselor. The flawed view of the ROLE is also part of the problem (in addition to other sin issues more familiar). Let me caution you: Don’t go to a counselor for emotional support – that is what we are to get from friends and family. Counselors – I know this may sound crazy – are where we go for COUNSEL. The client may not be clear on this, but the COUNSELOR must be clear on this. We aren’t emotional supports, our proper role is informational and reflective (helping the person see where they are and are not living in harmony with their accepted standards). When the counselor confuses the role, they endanger the effectiveness of the role, and confuse the person seeking help. Leaders must sharpen other leaders, and there are times the call to assemble is just for them.

Because the enemy wants to destroy, God established emergency signals that were also essential for God’s people.

Numbers 10:5 “But when you blow an alarm, the camps that are pitched on the east side shall set out. 6 “When you blow an alarm the second time, the camps that are pitched on the south side shall set out; an alarm is to be blown for them to set out. 7 “When convening the assembly, however, you shall blow without sounding an alarm… 9 “When you go to war in your land against the adversary who attacks you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, that you may be remembered before the LORD your God, and be saved from your enemies.

God instructed believers how to face a crisis so that they would be prepared and not confused (10:5-6). He worked on such a detail level that He placed an ASSEMBLY ORDER into the text. If they didn’t follow the instructions, confusion and defeat would follow. God wasn’t just wasting His time blowing off steam – there is a point to every instruction. Why do I mention this? Because many believers and many churches – whole denominations and fellowships – seem to miss the detailed nature of the Almighty. When God said believers should only marry believers – He had a reason. When God said that marriage disputes should be healed by both parties kneeling before the Cross and making things right with God and each other – He wasn’t just suggesting things. When God said not to put people into responsible positions of ministry too quickly, He had something in mind. We live in the time of cutting corners… but God’s commandments cannot be discounted. They must be understood, and when the enemy tries to move in to the thinking of the church, he should be spotted and identified.

Pastor Wayne Field noted: “General Peter Cosgrove is the recently retired Chief of the Australian Defense Force. In his autobiography he tells about his first tour of duty as a young lieutenant in Vietnam. His first posting was at a base near the village of Dat Do. The purpose of the base was to house army engineers. These Aussie soldiers would use giant bulldozers with a huge chain dragged between them to rip down vegetation. The purpose of this was to deny the enemy any possibility of concealment in the jungle. Huge tracts of jungle were just ripped down and burnt – that way no one could hide (p71). The Aussies were removing any camouflage that might possibly be used for evil purposes. In dealing with our spiritual enemies we have to pull down and lay flat the jungle in order to identify them. Once they have been identified we can better deal with them.” (sermon central illustrations).

The church simply cannot truly be the church without opening the fields around, and putting out spotters that will call sin what it is. Enough toleration of all things evil in the name of love!

I don’t know why America’s pulpits are aflame against the vicious killing of our unborn. I don’t know why we don’t hear insistence in the face of routine divorce. I cannot fathom what we are waiting for, when our children are being indoctrinated by pagan thinkers to follow after anti-god and anti-truth thinking. I am not on the war path – but I have pledged to seek God, teach His Word, and stand against the enemy’s cruel attacks on God’s church. It comes with the job. Frankly, some need to surrender the holy calling and go into politics if what they want to do is keep everyone happy – since it is working so well for our current Congress.

I plead with you to hear me from the heart I intend this… If you ARE divorced, if you DID have an abortion, if you have really violated God’s Word in your life in ways that cannot be undone – I am not here to beat you down. I want you to leave with GOD, not GUILT. What I am addressing is the growing flagrant violation of God’s Holy Word IN HIS MODERN CHURCH that is being caused by MISFORMED TOLERANCE and rampant BIBLICAL IGNORANCE. If you have done these things, don’t be hurt by my words, fall into the powerful and gentle hands of a Loving God! He didn’t stop loving you when you took a life any more than He stopped loving Moses, King David, or Saul of Tarsus when THEY took the life of another. God used them for great things, and He can and will use your life as well – if you give it to Him.

My words are to those who HAVE NOT done these things, BE WARNED. God is not swept up in the desire to be popular, and He is not concerned if His “tweets are trending”. He tells the truth, and He knows the end from the beginning.

Did you notice why God said to the children of Israel to blow the trumpet when the attack comes? (10:9) The purpose of the trumpet wasn’t just for people to get busy, but for God to come to their defense. He knew exactly when to come – when they ASKED HIM. We often “have not because we ask not”. We simply think that because God “already knows”, we shouldn’t really worry about informing Him. The fact is, we don’t cry out to God with our needs because we are informing Him – but because by our obedience to remember to call Him we are INVITING Him to help.

Not everyone was qualified to determine the danger and blow the trumpet.

Go back for a moment to a verse we skipped in Number 10:8 “The priestly sons of Aaron, moreover, shall blow the trumpets; and this shall be for you a perpetual statute throughout your generations.

God selected specific people who were to learn when it was appropriate to blow the trumpet (10:8). This wasn’t everyone with a strong opinion and an hour’s study – it was done by qualified men who were selected by God. I have to admit that one of the richest blessings in my life is to be involved in some small way, in the training of those God has called to lead in the next generation. I cannot tell you how exciting it is to watch them, through struggle and celebration, come to conclusions about their future and God’s call. Just keep this in mind: In ministry – too quickly appointed means too easy defeated. God selected and men trained – then as now.

Don’t’ forget! Not all the blasts were BAD either! Some were to call people to a feast, and remember that the Lord is their God!

This has seemed like such a tough message, that I am happy to tell you that there are some wonderful reminders of happy things! God said:

Numbers 10:10 “Also in the day of your gladness and in your appointed feasts, and on the first days of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be as a reminder of you before your God. I am the LORD your God.”

The signals were not all heavy – sometimes they were blessings and promises that all the people could share! Some were for GLADNESS and feasting and SHELMIM offerings (called “peace”) – where you expressed incredible thankfulness for all that God had done! The trumpet was not just calling upon God to protect, but blessing God for provision! What a joyful blowing of the trumpet on a day like that!

Once the people were ready and defense was set, God called “Wagons Ho!” and off they went.

He moved them with the sign of His presence (10:11-13): 11 Now in the second year, in the second month, on the twentieth of the month, the cloud was lifted from over the tabernacle of the testimony; 12 and the sons of Israel set out on their journeys from the wilderness of Sinai. Then the cloud settled down in the wilderness of Paran. 13 So they moved out for the first time according to the commandment of the LORD through Moses.

They followed Him in strict order (10:14-28): 

• First out of the camp was Judah, then Isaachar, and then Zebulun (10:14-16).

• As the third tribe moved, the Tabernacle’s disassembly was completed – with Gershonites and Merarites carrying in order.

• Next came the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, and Gad (10:18-20)

• The Kohathites took the holy objects next, allowing the Gershonites and Merarites to set up the Tabernacle in the next place in advance of their arrival with the objects.

• On came Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, and Dan (as rear guards), along with Asher and Nphtali (10:22-28).

Moses invited a good camping guide (Hobab, his brother in law the Midianite 10:29-32).

Every movement of the people had a second sound – beside the trumpet. Anyone standing near to Moses would hear him: 33 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. 34 The cloud of the LORD was over them by day when they set out from the camp. 35 Then it came about when the ark set out that Moses said, “Rise up, O LORD! And let Your enemies be scattered, And let those who hate You flee before You.” 36 When it came to rest, he said, “Return, O LORD, To the myriad thousands of Israel.”

Moses knew that God wanted to move the people, and that God was committed to lead the people – but they needed to CONSTANTLY be called to remember they weren’t to CHOOSE THEIR OWN PATH. God would defend them, but they must FOLLOW Him.

God wants His followers to be diligent to watch for the enemy’s work, and to constantly acknowledge our need of His hand of protection – because we forget how much we NEED God.

Be careful, church. Be watchful. Be vigilant. “The attack [of Pearl Harbor] took place [December 7, 1941] on a sunny Sunday morning. A minimal contingent of soldiers was on duty at the time. Most offices on the base were closed and many servicemen were on leave for the weekend. New technology, including the new radar mounted on Opana Point, were in place, manned and functioning at the time of the attack. The incoming Japanese attack planes were detected by the radar and reported, but were mistaken for an incoming group of American planes due from the mainland that morning. While on practice maneuvers outside the harbor that morning, an American destroyer spotted a Japanese submarine attempting to sneak into the harbor. The submarine was fired upon, immediately reported — and ignored.” (www.U-S-history.com).

God’s direction sometimes seems confusing, doesn’t it? You may have noticed that the Bible is not a small book, and it is not lacking in detail. God had much to say, and keeping all of it straight in our mind is essential, but it takes work. We need to really be intentional about learning and applying the Word, but sometimes it is confusing to us. Maybe a good way to introduce the problem is by using a humorous little story that makes the point…

Years ago, a small church suspected a candidate, despite his supposed seminary training, was not ready to be ordained to Gospel ministry. A committee of knowledgeable Christian men convened to question the candidate carefully on his knowledge of the Holy Scripture. The candidate offered some curious answers to theological questions. As a result, the committee decided the best thing to do was quiz his recall of the Scriptures. The candidate “… was asked, “What part of the Bible do you like best?” He said: “I like the New Testament best.” Then he was asked, “What Book in the New Testament is your favorite?” He answered, “I like the Book of the Parables, Sir.” [Puzzled by the response…] They asked him to relate one of the parables to the committee. And a bit uncertain, he began… “Once upon a time a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves; and the thorns grew up and choked the man. And he went on and met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave that man, yes sir, a thousand talents of silver, and a hundred changes of raiment. “And he got in his chariot and drove furiously and, as he was driving along under a big tree, his hair got caught in a limb and left him hanging there! And he hung there many days and many nights. The ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink. And one night while he was hanging there asleep, his wife Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he fell on stony ground. And it began to rain, and rained forty days and forty nights. And he hid himself in a cave. Later he went on and met a man who said, ‘Come in and take supper with me.’ But he said, ‘I can’t come in, for I have married a wife.’ And the man went out into the highways and hedges and compelled him to come in! He then came to Jerusalem, and saw Queen Jezebel sitting high and lifted up in a window of the wall. When she saw him she laughed, and he said, ‘Throw her down out of there,’ and they threw her down. And he said ‘Throw her down again,’ and they threw her down seventy-times-seven. And the fragments which they picked up filled twelve baskets full! NOW, whose wife will she be in the day of the Judgment?” The story didn’t say what the committee decided, [but I have hope that he will not be your next Pastor]. (Adapted from a sermon by Bobby Scobey, If the Church Became Unchristian # 4 – Behavior More Important than Belief, 6/22/2010).

The passage we are looking at today will help us straighten out some problems in following God’s direction, while giving us confidence in God’s comforting presence. God IS with us. God’s will CAN be understood. His direction CAN be followed – but it will take work to discern the path. Look at the example in Numbers chapter nine.

Key Principle: God’s continual presence in our life is an empowering prize and a securing peace. When we don’t see it, we have strayed, and must choose to return.

Just as with us, so God dwelt with His people in the desert of Sinai, as they made their journey to the Promised Land God showed up before the people of Israel to keep the people moving ahead and confident about their direction. In the passage for our lesson today, He showed up in two important ways: 1) in response to uncertain application to the Word – when two instructions of God seemed to conflict God made His direction clear; 2) in direction and obvious manifestation of His power and presence when God wanted the people to move, He obviously LED them. The passage provided a record that there are two clear ways to follow God’s direction when His followers are uncertain:

• Seek Him when His Word offers what appears to be conflicting direction.
• Watch for His manifest presence and empowering in our lives.

God isn’t playing “cat and mouse games” with believers. He WANTS us to know His direction. He isn’t looking to be cryptic, causing us to search dark caves for ancient inscriptions. He has delivered His Word through the perils of history and the scrutiny of arrogant men. He has guided us by the hand with His enduring and patient hand. Yet, following the One we cannot see with our physical eye, while we are so transfixed in the material world can be difficult. God provided the content of His Word and the tug of His hand – yet there are still problems discerning His direction. God wants us to WORK at discerning His direction, and following His manifest presence. If we cut the chapter in two parts, we see answers to two distinct problems…

Two Problems following God’s direction:

Problem One: The complex nature of God’s Word in a sin-ridden society.

Life is often more complicated than a simple “right” and “wrong” in many areas of modern choice. I am not implying that God is uncertain about His desired design, but rather that the fruits of generations of sinners have made life more complicated than simply looking at a verse and deciding what is a correct practice. The further from God one has walked, the more complex it becomes to recognize the combinations of principles from God’s Word to solve problems. Facing the complexity of the modern family alone is a study in threading the needle of truth. Add to that the breadth of the principles of God’s Word, and we find ourselves having to search carefully for answers.

When we were raising children in schools that began with prayer, and taught respect to authority, and when we had the support of a community that operated in principles much closer to Biblical truth – the culture helped us raise our children to fear God and walk much closer to a Biblical form of morality. Whether we engaged the moral lesson that “Timmy and Lassie” taught us, or soaked in a primer in honesty we got from watching “Opie” get caught in a lie in Mayberry, the culture didn’t seem to try to pull the Bible away from daily life at every turn. We live now in different times. ABC Family line up on Tuesday night is now “Pretty Little Liars” followed by “The Lying Game”…and that is the FAMILY CHANNEL. The previews alone should scare a follower of God about what passes as moral in common culture.

As sin multiplies and wrong is redefined as right in this “progressive” culture, the application of God’s Word requires greater energy and more careful search with a consistent approach to Scripture. This is not a time for laziness in our study. We dare not “dumb down” our knowledge of the Word inside the church as the world numbs itself from God’s truth on the outside. That combination will leave young believers helpless in the confusion over God’s direction. It is time to do a more careful work in the Word, and to examine our lives carefully for conformity to God’s standard, while seeking to walk with intensity and consistency in God’s path of direction.

Now here is my question: What do you do when you have an important choice to make, and more than one principle of God’s Word applies, but doesn’t seamlessly fit together?

That was the problem in Numbers 9:1-14. God had already said ALL ISRAEL was to participate without exception in the Passover feast (cp. Ex. 12), but God subsequently instructed separation from sacrifices and cultic observances in Israel by those defiled by burial of their dead (Numbers 5:2), restricting them from participation in OTHER SACRIFICES and worship for a time. The specific question was this: “Which principle of God’s spoken Word applies in THIS SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCE?”

The Situation was set amid listening to the Lord:

God instructed the timing of the Passover feast. He wanted things done exactly, and according to all that He had said. Numbers 9:1 Thus the LORD spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, 2 “Now, let the sons of Israel observe the Passover at its appointed time. 3 “On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall observe it at its appointed time; you shall observe it according to all its statutes and according to all its ordinances.” God spoke clearly, and Moses knew exactly what God’s intent was concerning the observance. They were given in statutes (a word for “engravings” or eternal and unchanging truths).

The context was strict obedience to the revealed desire of God:

Numbers 9:4 So Moses told the sons of Israel to observe the Passover. 5 They observed the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai; according to all that the LORD had commanded Moses, so the sons of Israel did. This should remind us of an important truth: God is not haphazard in His prescriptions. He is not sloppy in His standards – and His followers must not be as well. When God calls on His people to act, He does so with very specific principles and standards in mind. When Paul wrote to first century Corinthian believers not to “yoke together with unbelievers” – he certainly excluded cross participation between the pagan temple and the local church. The values, world view, and allegiances were different – because their God was different. As God spoke through Paul’s words, God marked out the family of believers as distinct in their community. Would not marrying a person who does not see life as an opportunity to serve our Master betray this idea? Believers need to be careful to recall that God is specific because God knows what He wants. For Israel, He expressed that He wanted full participation in the festival as previously instructed… and that set up the problem.

The Problem was there was no previous precedent for a specific case of conflicting Scripture:

Outside the camp were some who were defiled because of a recent burial. They were now faced with a dilemma – two things God said seemed to conflict. Numbers 9:6 But there were some men who were unclean because of the dead person, so that they could not observe Passover on that day; so they came before Moses and Aaron on that day. Don’t quickly dismiss that Moses and Aaron received the men. The men CAME IN to the camp to meet with Moses, though they were defiled. Remember, defilement didn’t mean SINFUL, it meant INELLIGIBLE for a specified time because of a condition that was NOT specifically sinful. Not all defilement is from direct sin – though sin defiles. Sin causes death in a general way, and the handling of the dead defiles one and sets them out of participation for a time.

Moses was willing to meet them, because it wasn’t clear what they should do. Was defilement suspended by God at Passover? How could God both REQUIRE them to do something and RESTRICT them at the same time? They assumed they WERE ELIGIBLE and returned to the camp – a logical but erroneous conclusion.

The Question was WHY they could not observe (they were still part of Israel!):

Standing in front of Moses and Aaron, the men confronted the problem: Numbers 9:7 Those men said to him, “Though we are unclean because of the dead person, why are we restrained from presenting the offering of the LORD at its appointed time among the sons of Israel?” 8 Moses therefore said to them, “Wait, and I will listen to what the LORD will command concerning you.” Look at what Moses did with the problem! When he didn’t know God’s direction, he dropped to his knees and sought God.

Don’t misunderstand or misread what happened. There were TWO THINGS Moses did:

1) He confronted each of the commands and knew them thoroughly BEFORE he came before God. What it meant to OBSERVE the feast was not at all unclear. The three leading points: eating the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, leaving nothing till the next day, and not breaking a bone (Exodus 12:8, Exodus 12:10, Exodus 12:46) are repeated in this passage.

Let me say it carefully, in hopes that the lesson will not be obscured: We don’t have to prayerfully ask God for answers to questions He has already made clear in His Word. Don’t drop to your knees and ask if you should have a sexual encounter outside of a marriage vow. Don’t seek God’s face, asking whether you should steal money from another’s dresser drawer. Don’t fall in desperation before Jesus asking Him to change His standards on pornography. Don’t beg God to give you millions without work in the next lottery. Respect for God means searching His Word before we ask Him to answer us contrary to His stated principles and His clean character. This is why it is important for a believer to KNOW the Word so that they can follow God’s direction. There aren’t as many difficult directions as we may think. Direction is always a mystery to one who has not read the map already.

2) He sought God when the two commands could not be reconciled. When two passages seemed to lead in two directions – he was without an answer. Moses THEN went to God with the problem.

• Rahab faced this issue when the spies came to her. Should she tell the king the men were hidden under the flax on the roof, and came from the northeast? Should she hide the men sent from God to her, at the expense of telling the truth?

• Daniel faced this problem when the king made a decree to cease all prayer to anyone but to his throne, and God had already communicated with Daniel about his consistent prayer life.

• Peter and John faced this when they were told by Jerusalem temple officials to cease preaching about Jesus.

Every believer who has ever had to carefully search the Scriptures for issues of civil disobedience has faced the problem. God calls believers to respect the government, but God placed the limit of that obedience inside the specific boundaries of His Word. The Apostles said: “We must obey God rather than men” because they understood the boundary of the two principles in collision.

Mishandling the Bible can have severe consequences. When Federal troops occupied Cheraw, South Carolina, the Confederates left so much gun powder behind that the Union troops decided to dump most of it in a little creek. Some bored soldiers were looking for some entertainment so they scooped up handfuls of the powder and carried it to their cooking fires a few hundred yards away, where they exploded it amid much shouting and laughter. With each handful they grew more careless, and left numerous crisscrossing trails of powder running back to the ravine. Sergeant Theodore Upson of the 100th Indiana had just started his coffee boiling when he saw “a little flash of powder running along the ground.” A moment later he noticed that the powder flashes had multiplied and were running in all directions. Someone yelled, “Look out for the magazine!” Upson and his comrades “made some pretty quick moves” in putting as much space between themselves and the creek bed as the burning powder trails would allow. “Then there was a tremendous explosion,” Upson recorded. “The dirt and stones flew in every direction.” The ground shook for miles. The force of the blast destroyed several houses and shattered nearly every window in town. A storm of shell and shrapnel rained down for a half-mile in every direction. One officer and three enlisted men were killed as a result of the blast, and more than a dozen were wounded. Rumor had it that Sherman at first believed the explosion was an act of sabotage, and was on the verge of issuing orders to burn the rest of the town and execute the mayor in retaliation. He relented, however, when he learned that it was the carelessness of his own men that had caused the devastation. (adapted from Mark L. Bradley,The Battle of Bentonville: Last Stand in the Carolinas, pg. 67-69).

When the Bible is poorly handled, people use its pages to justify enslavement of men of color. Social justice proponents use it to justify endless handouts without regard to any personal responsibility. The “love of God” gets misconstrued to tolerate whatever sinful practice has recently sparkled in the eye of the lost world. The Word explodes on people who use it as a popular quote book, or a rationalization source for sinful display. In the end, it is misquoted to justify wickedness and its context is perverted to appease religious sensibility, but it leads men away from God!

God replied with three standards:

God has a plan and He is not afraid to answer questions about it. Moses came with a legitimate issue, and God answered it. God offered three important statements:

First, He instructed them to observe a month later, but to observe exactly as the others did. Numbers 9:9 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 10 “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘If any one of you or of your generations becomes unclean because of a dead person, or is on a distant journey, he may, however, observe the Passover to the LORD. 11 ‘In the second month on the fourteenth day at twilight, they shall observe it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 12 ‘They shall leave none of it until morning, nor break a bone of it; according to all the statute of the Passover they shall observe it.

God didn’t force people in the midst of severe pain and loss to festivity and observance; He allowed them to choose to be a part of this a month later. At the same time, the METHODS used were not open to individual interpretation. “Do it or don’t”, the Lord said, “but if you do, it can be practiced only according to the statutes.” The normal restriction from offering did not apply if they felt they wanted to participate.

Second, He restricted any delay by others: Numbers 9:13 ‘But the man who is clean and is not on a journey, and yet neglects to observe the Passover, that person shall then be cut off from his people, for he did not present the offering of the LORD at its appointed time. That man will bear his sin.

Third, He pressed the point that there was one standard, even among strangers in their midst: Number 9:14 ‘If an alien sojourns among you and observes the Passover to the LORD, according to the statute of the Passover and according to its ordinance, so he shall do; you shall have one statute, both for the alien and for the native of the land.’”

Step back from the detail of the passage and look at what God made clear here. The keys to following God in the complexity of His Word are two: knowing the Word well enough to understand the issue, and then seeking God for His specific intention in prayer.

I don’t want to beat the point, but I want it to be very clear. The Bible contains many principles that may appear to conflict in complex life situations. It is the work of the local church to help you to build a consistent study pattern in God’s Word, so that you will have a grasp of how to apply to principles of Scripture to the complex issues we face in modern life. If you are regularly a part of a church where that is not being accomplished, I apologize for my colleagues and their misuse of sacred responsibility.

We can have fun together, but we are not a social club. We may enjoy experiences as we tie our lives together, but the primary focus of the local church is to train you to understand the Biblical world view and live it out in daily life. This includes relationships, so the body works together. This is not a counseling center, but the Bible offers the best counsel to be found on the planet. This is not a philanthropy organization, but Spirit-filled believers are generous people, and love to give toward the meeting of needs. This is not a social club, but God’s people function as a body and need to laugh together on their way to being a useful tool in God’s hand.

Let me ask you to consider something: Purpose to dig into God’s Word this year. Be a part of learning it, studying it, and applying it to life. Learn where problems are answered inside its pages. Be a part of a church that is heavily invested in the work of systematic and careful study of its contents. The world outside doesn’t know it, but it desperately needs well informed Christians who can discuss the principles of the Bible with confidence and clarity. When tragedy strikes, the airwaves fill with pundits that have no real ability to explain evil, let alone restore confidence and hope. The hope is found in the truth. The truth is found in the Word of God.

Problem Two: The need to discern God’s manifest presence

I think every believer wants more than a book to follow. We don’t fall in love with the Word as an end in itself. We fall in love with what God said, because we are learning to fall in love with HIM! We want to experience His love and presence in daily life. Let me say it plainly: God directs believers in more than just principles – He does it in very specific manifestations of presence. If you are walking with God, you KNOW His touch. You experience His presence. I am not getting spooky, but I loathe the hesitancy we have for really admitting that we long to have Him hold tightly onto our hand and guide us. I want that – I admit it. I want more than principles and theory – I want to KNOW HIM, walk with Him, follow Him. The good news is that He desires the same thing. Look at the second part of Numbers 9, this time in the verse from 15 to 23…

The sign of His manifest presence came from the time of clear obedience:

Don’t overlook that God’s manifest presence – the times when He nudges you, speaks into your life through the voice of others, shouts through something you read or hear, or even inserts His direction into your mind as you walk through the day – are all predicated in the Word on obedience to His Word. Numbers 9:15 Now on the day that the tabernacle was erected the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony, and in the evening it was like the appearance of fire over the tabernacle, until morning. 16 So it was continuously; the cloud would cover it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.

The people DID what God said, and God showed up when the map ran out for them. They knew His general direction, and they were experiencing His character. Moses was getting and giving His Word. Yet, they needed more. They needed to know where to go next…and God didn’t let them down. His obvious presence followed their submission – and it still does.

The marker of the presence moved to get the people re-directed:

Numbers 9:17 Whenever the cloud was lifted from over the tent, afterward the sons of Israel would then set out; and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the sons of Israel would camp. 18 At the command of the LORD the sons of Israel would set out, and at the command of the LORD they would camp; as long as the cloud settled over the tabernacle, they remained camped. 19 Even when the cloud lingered over the tabernacle for many days, the sons of Israel would keep the LORD’S charge and not set out.

Notice that verse 18 clues us in to the reality that the people understood God’s movement as His command. When God stopped, they knew He wanted them to stop. When God went on, they saw it as His direction.

The key to following God’s direction was watching out for His manifest presence:

Numbers 9:20 If sometimes the cloud remained a few days over the tabernacle, according to the command of the LORD they remained camped. Then according to the command of the LORD they set out. 21 If sometimes the cloud remained from evening until morning, when the cloud was lifted in the morning, they would move out; or if it remained in the daytime and at night, whenever the cloud was lifted, they would set out. 22 Whether it was two days or a month or a year that the cloud lingered over the tabernacle, staying above it, the sons of Israel remained camped and did not set out; but when it was lifted, they did set out. 23 At the command of the LORD they camped, and at the command of the LORD they set out; they kept the LORD’S charge, according to the command of the LORD through Moses.

The keys to following God’s manifest presence are two: desire to follow Him and keep careful watch for Him. The people moved as they saw God move. They kept their eyes fixed on Him. They wanted to be in His presence and follow Him as He moved. They didn’t move and then ask the cloud to follow them – they watched the cloud and moved according to His Divine call.

Let me ask some penetrating questions: Are you experiencing God’s daily presence in your walk through life? Is He directing your paths – and you KNOW it? Are you in a position of obedience and confidence, such that God can easily step in and give direction to you?

I must finish our time in Numbers 9, but I cannot leave without exploring my heart concerning God’s direction. I need to assess my commitment to the Word, and my hunger to grow in it this year, as the Lord allows. If I don’t WANT to know what God has said, then I have already stopped listening to His directions. There is no point to His speaking into my life – I am not listening. I show in my obstinacy the rejection of God’s control, and forfeit God’s direction. If that is true, we must all remember this: You cannot get where you want to go on the wrong road. The right path to fulfillment and stability is the one I walk holding the Master’s hand.

Do you know why believers struggle to follow God together? It is as simple as the lesson of the sunflower. The tall and slender flower seems to recognize its absolute need of the sun – so the head literally follows the sun’s movements across the sky. Have you ever stood and watched a full field of sunflowers? Watching one sunflower follow the sun can be interesting, but watching hundreds of tall, yellow flowers bending in unison to follow the sun is nothing short of incredible. When you watch them, you notice they all seem harmonious and synchronized. If you look closely, watch for this one truth: their unity appears totally dependent on one thing…their relationship to the sun. So does ours. Believers that follow the Son do it in harmony with one another, and confidence that they are positioned where God intended them to be.

God’s continual presence in our life is an empowering prize and a securing peace. When we don’t see it, we have strayed, and must choose to return.