Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Good morning, 11:15.
[00:00:07] Good morning. If you have your Bibles, would you open them to the Book of Numbers? We're going to be in chapters 13 and 14 this morning.
[00:00:16] Would you guys just do me a favor?
[00:00:18] Were any of you, like, kept awake last night by the storm?
[00:00:22] Anyone? I was like, wow, that was.
[00:00:25] That was weird.
[00:00:27] At, like, 2:30 in the morning, a bunch of my family was sitting out, like, right in front of our front door, looking at the window. And one of my daughters walks down and, like, lightning is.
[00:00:37] And she looks at me and she says, dad, do you hear that? I'm like, yes, honey, I hear the lightning exploding all around our home, for sure. All right, so I hope that you. Because you're the 11:15, you slept in, you were energized, and you are ready to go. Yeah. Amen. All right. Good.
[00:00:58] All right. So for the rest of this fall, we are teaching a series called Narratives and Numbers. And the goal of this series is very simple. We're gonna go through all of these narratives, these stories and numbers and Deuteronomy. And what we want to do is we want to be able to look at their really frustrating, seemingly unending sin and rebellion against God. And we wanna look in the mirror and say, God, how am I like them?
[00:01:27] Are there areas of my heart and my life where I need to repent? Because we're always tempted to look at Israel and think to ourselves, I would never do that.
[00:01:35] Well, you have the Holy Spirit. If you've trusted in Christ, you're right. Right now, you might not do that because the Holy Spirit might be restraining you from some of those things. But apart from the Holy Spirit, it's actually hard to know what we're actually capable of. And so what we're doing this year, can you guys believe, like, 2/3 of the way through 20?
[00:01:57] We're taking the back half of 2025. And what we're asking is that every individual. We're asking every family and our church family to enter into a season of personal confession, confession of sin, specifically repentance, and of making some really hard decisions. And so what we've learned is that there's a whole bunch of people who kind of, in the aftermath of COVID have allowed some sin to really creep into their life, haven't addressed it. There are also a bunch of really big, challenging decisions that, you know, God wants you to make, and maybe you're postponing them. And so our desire is to kind of go into this year, finish 2025, and we want to enter into 2026. With clean hands, with a pure heart.
[00:02:41] I really still believe that it's not just in the Old Testament. It says, the eyes of the Lord, they go to and fro the earth, looking for those whose hearts are blameless toward him.
[00:02:52] As the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the earth, I would love him to stop at my life and my family at our church. I think you would want the same thing and be able to say, God, we want to be used by you.
[00:03:04] And oftentimes before God's going to use somebody, there's probably a season of humility and repentance that needs to happen. And so we're just asking, lord, would you bring us to a place of humility, of confession, of repentance, of obedience? And we want to go into 20, 26 ready personally, as families and as a church for whatever you have.
[00:03:23] All right, so almost every single narrative or story in Numbers and Deuteronomy was written to make a point. And I was shared with you, like, weeks ago. But I wanna remind us of this.
[00:03:34] Every single story, for the most part, was written to make this singular point that God was just to not allow the wilderness generation into the promised land. Today in numbers 13 and 14, this is the week, this is the story where God is going to discipline them and take an entire generation and say, you're actually gonna go die in the wilderness because of your sin. You're not gonna inherit the promised land. And you're gonna be tempted to look at God's judgment today and say, that's really unfair. Wow, God's really strict. God's, like, really mean.
[00:04:09] And every one of these stories are designed so that you are left with one conclusion.
[00:04:15] God wasn't just. Just God was actually unbelievably merciful and gracious to a bunch of ungrateful, impetulant Rebe who refuse to repent. And so that's what I want you to see there. Now, if you're new, let me just catch you up.
[00:04:34] Israel grumbles a lot, they complain a lot.
[00:04:40] When they don't get their way, they're upset with God, they're upset with Moses. We're going to leave. I wish we would die. Send us home.
[00:04:48] God has put up with their complaining for a while.
[00:04:54] And then he warns them, and then he's like, we're done.
[00:04:59] So when people start complaining, people start dying.
[00:05:03] Now, if. Let's say, you're complaining and then all of a sudden a fire comes out, destroys you and kills you, right? And people are watching this do you think they would, like, learn their lesson?
[00:05:12] But they don't. It doesn't matter who the Lord ends their life after, by the way. Multiple. Multiple warnings after warning after warning, right? It doesn't matter when you have a grumbling, complaining heart, you just default to grumbling and complaining, even when you know what the consequences are gonna be.
[00:05:29] So something I wanna bring you insight into is I think sometimes people think that when we get up and preach, we just know all of this stuff intuitively. The reality is we study a lot. There's a group of pastors who work together, and we learn as we go. And so we're learning a lot of this, like a couple days or weeks or months before we get to deliver this message. And I wanna share with you something really striking that will help us understand that all of our pastoral team learned two weeks ago. And very simply this. When you read the Book of Numbers, what you're reading is a historical record for the nation of Israel. It's like an official record.
[00:06:04] But when you read the book of Deuteronomy, you're gonna notice that it actually retells a whole bunch of the same stories. Deuteronomy means second law. It's like, well, why do you have to give the law again when you already gave it in the first place?
[00:06:15] Well, Deuteronomy seems to be more like Moses personal journal and the stories shared from Moses perspective.
[00:06:23] And so there are details in Deuteronomy with these stories that you're not gonna find in the official historical record of Numbers. And so this is gonna be really important. I want you to see this. Open up your Bibles. Numbers 13. We'll start in verse one.
[00:06:36] The Lord spoke to Moses saying, send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel.
[00:06:47] From each tribe of their fathers, you shall send a man, everyone, a chief among them. All right, so if you just look at this text, who sent the spies into the promised land? It's not a trick question. The answer is, Yahweh did, the Lord did. And this is absolutely true. But something can be 100% true and not the whole story. Do you guys know what I'm saying?
[00:07:13] So Deuteronomy chapter one, there's actually more to the story. Now, Deuteronomy, remember, this is kind of Moses journal, personal reflection on the events he's telling. This story from his Deuteronomy 1:21 says this.
[00:07:27] See, the Lord your God has set the land before you go up. Take possession as the Lord The God of your fathers has told you, do not fear or be dismayed.
[00:07:42] It doesn't say anything here about going out and spying the land, does it? In fact, God's first command to them was, hey, we're on the precipice of the land.
[00:07:50] Go, don't be afraid. Cause there's gonna be a bunch of things there that are gonna make you afraid. I'm with you. The land's yours. I'm gonna take care of this. Let's do this. Now then, verse 22, Moses tells the rest of the story.
[00:08:03] Verse 22. Then, after God said to go, all of you came near me and said, wait a minute, it's kind of scary.
[00:08:14] Let us send men before us that they may explore the land for us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up into which we shall come. So whose idea was it originally to go spy out the land?
[00:08:29] It wasn't God's. It was apparently the leaders of Israel. They came to him and they're like, we gotta go spy out the land. We're not afraid. We're just trying to be wise and make sure we're being really good stewards. Okay, sure.
[00:08:42] Verses 3 to 15, what they do is they give you the names of all the 12 spies.
[00:08:50] If you don't know how the story ends, two of them, Joshua and Caleb, are the good guys, and the other 10 are the bad guys. And every one of these 10 names are written down to the everlasting shame of them and their tribe. But two of them, Joshua and Caleb, are marked down to everlasting glory to the praise of God. So verse 16, though there's a little nuance on Joshua that I want you to notice.
[00:09:13] It says this in Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun. And then this is the new name Moses gave him, Joshua. So originally, Joshua's name, it wasn't Joshua, it was Hoshea. And Hoshea in Hebrew means very simply, salvation Joshua. Which is, by the way, Yeshua, or the same name for Jesus.
[00:09:35] Joshua means Yahweh Saves.
[00:09:39] So Moses did not mentor the other 11 spies, but this Joshua, this was his personal protege.
[00:09:45] And one of the things that apparently Moses saw in Joshua was this leadership potential. He saw what God was calling him to, and to prepare him for the leadership that he would have amongst God's people, he changed his name from Salvation to Yahweh Saves for at least two reasons.
[00:10:04] One of them is simple.
[00:10:06] Joshua, you're going to have all these inevitable military victories, but I don't want you to forget for a single moment you're not the savior of Israel. Yahweh is. It does not matter how awesome your military does. It doesn't matter how wise and smart you are. What you need to understand is that the source behind every single victory is never you. If Yahweh was not with you, you and your ragtag group of slaves, they would die in a heartbeat. That's number one. Number two, number God is faithful to save his faithful people. Yahweh does save. And let me tell you why this is going to be important for an Old Testament leader. Because the way that God saved his people in the Old Testament, from my perspective, seems if I'm the people, a little bit irritating. Because here's what he does.
[00:10:59] God tends to save his people at 11, 59 and 59 seconds.
[00:11:06] Right at the very last second.
[00:11:08] And why does God do this? Well, God could, like, just do it right away. And you're like, God, just, like, throw us a bone here. Because in the waiting, in these last moments, in these last minutes, in these last seconds where you feel like, there's no way he's gonna come through, there's no hope. What comes out of us but our true character, we are forced to come face to face with our real selves, with the real measure of faith, with our real confidence in God. Not so that we can be shamed, but so that we can repent and come before the Lord and renew our strength and confidence and faith in God. And so what Moses does for Joshua, it's a huge gift. He's just like, listen, you need to remember, God gets the credit, and he will always save his faithful people. Look at verse 21. The spies. They go into the land, it says. So they went up, and they spied out the land from the wilderness.
[00:12:02] And the descendants of Anak were there. Okay, this is where if you were, like, part of the original audience who received this, you would have been like, oh, no. The descendants of Anak were there. So, like, you're supposed to be afraid at this moment. Okay, good.
[00:12:18] Verse 23. We're going to come back to them.
[00:12:21] Says, they came to the valley of the Spies, to the valley of Eshcol, and they cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them. They also brought some pomegranates and figs. In other words, the fruit was so ripe, so luxurious, that even just getting a cluster of grapes would require two men on a pole to carry it.
[00:12:46] Verse 25. They come home, says at the end of the 40 days, they returned from spying out the land, and they came to Moses and Aaron. And this is important to all the congregation. This wasn't like a private leadership meeting debrief. This was. Everybody gets to hear our report.
[00:13:05] They came to all the congregation of the people of Israel, and they did this in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh.
[00:13:11] They brought back word to them into the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, we came to the land which you sent us.
[00:13:20] It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. All of this is true so far. Look at what awaits for you on the other side of following God into what would probably be a very scary situation. But when you're with Yahweh, when God is on your side, run into the darkest, scariest places, because you can't lose if you're with him.
[00:13:41] Verse 28. The land is perfect. Yes. And then there's this frustrating word.
[00:13:47] However.
[00:13:49] However, the people who dwell in the land, they're strong, and the cities are fortified and very large.
[00:13:59] This is my little interpretation. I imagine he stopped and everyone was like, yeah, but Yahweh's on our side. And then he says this. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. Now, do you guys.
[00:14:12] Do you remember? You might not have been here, but I had this time where I was like, I really want a button that when I press the button, it goes, dun, dun, dun. This would be like the time you press that button, like, doo, doo, doo, right?
[00:14:23] Then more to come. So on Anak, we're not done with him yet. Verse 29. Not just the descendants of Anak, but the Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeh. Oh, no. The Amalekites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites. Oh, my. They dwell in the hill country. And you're not even gonna believe those guys, but the Canaanites, they dwell by the seal on the Jordan. Oh, no. What are we gonna do? That's kind of the way that this is being told, okay?
[00:14:47] By listing every single tribe like this, the 10 spies, their objective was to sow seeds of fear into the hearts of all the congregation of Israel.
[00:15:01] Now, these were objectively, all of the most evil people in the world, all consolidated in one land, different tribes, but they're all there. These are the most fearsome, the most evil, the most violent, the most physically large of all the possible lands that they could go to take over. This group of tribes is the most evil and the one where you don't want to go into. And tribal warfare, it's always.
[00:15:34] But these tribes had reputations. And you're like, listen, we know if we go and lose, we know what's going to happen. But for these tribes, we're kind of just really scared of what will happen to our women and our children. And so the level of evil and violence that takes place in these tribal nations in the land of Canaan are probably beyond anything that you can really imagine.
[00:15:55] And Caleb is going to speak.
[00:15:58] Do you know what the name Caleb means? Well, why would you? You don't speak Hebrew. So neither did I until we studied it.
[00:16:04] Caleb can be translated in one of two ways. It can be translated either as dog or wholehearted.
[00:16:13] And those are pretty different. But what Caleb would choose would determine his legacy. And so Caleb chose to be wholehearted. In verse 30 says, But Caleb quieted the people before Moses. Why are they.
[00:16:29] Why are they in an uproar? Because they're afraid. And they've heard about the Anakites and the Malachites and all this stuff. All right? Just making up names quieted them and said, this is Caleb. Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it. Don't you guys just want a Caleb in your life? Like, somebody who's like, don't be afraid. The Lord's with you. He's called you to it. Let's go. If he's with us, nothing can stop us. I Love Caleb's verse 31. The dogs speak, they respond.
[00:17:03] Then the men who had gone up with him said, we're not able to go against the people, for they're stronger than we are. You just want to, like, reach to the pages of scripture and wring their neck? Okay, so they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out.
[00:17:22] Bad report, or the word bad, it just here simply means fearful and faithless.
[00:17:30] The report was intended to cast doubt over the trustworthiness of both Moses and Yahweh.
[00:17:39] These 10 spies had lost confidence in Moses and Yahweh, and they wanted everyone to follow them, not Moses and Yahweh.
[00:17:48] The report was also designed to make them so afraid so that they would turn back and go back to Egypt and be slaves again. Now, here's what's interesting about the report.
[00:18:01] It would appear the data points of the report, the facts of what they shared about the land, were true.
[00:18:08] What made this report bad was their lack of Confidence and faith in God that they were declaring to all of the nation.
[00:18:18] All right, so have you ever spent a ton of emotional energy and anxiety on a fear or a what if only to have the thing happen and none of your what ifs or fears came to pass?
[00:18:32] Like, if future you could travel back in time and talk to you future you would say, hey, it's gonna be fine. I know all your what ifs, all your fears, all your anxieties, but by the way, none of them are gonna come true. Just follow the Lord, do the right next thing, it's all going to pan out. Don't you worry your little heart. Don't you guys wish future you could, like, come back and have conversations with us on a regular basis? I sure do.
[00:18:55] And so here's the irony of the spies report.
[00:19:00] The spies were petrified of the people in the land.
[00:19:06] But what the spies didn't know was that the people of the land were even more petrified of them.
[00:19:15] Again, if you don't know how the story ends, spoiler alert, they end up rebelling even more against God here. And then the Lord says to them, you're all going to go back into the wilderness. You're going to die for 40 years. And your children, 19 and under, they're going to be the ones in 40 years to go into the. Into the promised land. 40 years later, there's a woman named Rahab. And I want you to listen to what Rahab says when 40 years later, they actually go into the promised land to take it. Joshua, chapter two, verse nine. Rahab says, I know that the Lord has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all of the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. Why are they afraid?
[00:20:03] For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt. Do you know when that happened 40 years ago? And do you know how fast word of that spread? Probably within a month or two. People are talking about what these slaves did to Egypt and how Yahweh came through and parted the Red Sea and destroyed the Egyptian army and saved them and brought them into the wilderness. Forty years ago, the word had already spread. So that if they had gone into the promised Land, the hearts of those people were already melting. But then she goes on to verse 11. And as soon as we heard it 40 years prior, our hearts melted and there was no spirit left in any man because of you. For the Lord your God, he is God in heavens above and in the earth beneath these dummies forfeited all of this blessing because they were afraid of things that the Lord had already taken care of.
[00:20:58] Trust the Lord.
[00:20:59] And here's what Joshua and Caleb knew that the other 10 spies and apparently the rest of the congregation couldn't get their head around. God saves.
[00:21:09] God saves.
[00:21:11] His faithful people, his rebellious people. He will judge, but God saves. And if the Lord said, go into that land, don't be afraid, Take it. What do we do? We trust in the Lord. And I would rather die trusting in the Lord than running away scared.
[00:21:27] Now, if I might indulge myself and a handful of you in this room, could we take a five to seven minute hiatus and talk about something that will probably be, by the time we get to the end of this text, the primary thing that you're going to be talking about at lunch?
[00:21:44] What is that subject? You guys ready for it?
[00:21:47] The Nephilim. How many of you are excited? So this is like, some of you are like, why are we talking about this? I have rarely ever seen a biblical subject come up on more secular podcasts than I have the Nephilim. Okay, so what I want to do is I want to explain them to you, and then maybe we're going to bring you into some, like, kind of biblical theories to try to make sense of them. But I do think if you got a little bit of a light heart and you're interested in the Bible, this could be fun. And then we'll get back to the text. You guys ready? All right, we'll start in verse 32, in numbers 13, the specifics of their bad report. This is what they said. The land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants. Like, what does that even mean?
[00:22:30] And all the people that we saw in it are of great height. Verse 33. And there we saw the Nephilim, red button.
[00:22:41] The sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim.
[00:22:46] And we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers. And so we seemed to them all. Right, so who are the Nephilim? Before the Flood, the Bible teaches about a group of men who roamed the earth called the Nephilim. And it describes the Nephilim as the offsprings of the sons of God and the daughters of. Of men. In other words, demons and women. And these evil offspring resulted in a group of people who were unusually large. Now, the question you should be asking is. Wait a minute, Pastor Michael. Angels and demons can take human form.
[00:23:28] And the answer is, I don't understand how this works out. But do you guys remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the angels take human form? And then I want to just show you this text from the Book of Hebrews. This is written to New Testament Christians about the possibilities of them interacting with angels who appear as humans. And so here's what Hebrews says. Hebrews says, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. And so I don't understand how it works. I don't get this. I do know that if you ever encountered somebody that ended up being an angel.
[00:24:03] Angels exist for two primary reasons. Number one, to serve God and to serve his saints. So whatever it is, it's gonna be for your good. But it's interesting. The author of Hebrews is like, hey, some of you have entertained angels underwear and you're not even. You don't even know what's happening, right?
[00:24:17] They're serving and doing things on earth at the same time. There appears to be this time before the flood where the demons did the same thing and they did some really evil things.
[00:24:27] The book of second Peter and the book of Jude identify that whatever these demons did was so heinous that God sent them to doomy pits of darkness before the final judgment. Like it was so bad that he took these demons and he put them away and said, you guys are never leaving until the final judgment. Then I'm casting you into the fiery pit of hell forever and ever. Now a couple interesting details about the Nephilim. I told you we're gonna have a little fun with this, so let's ride together. I'm giving you maybe some ideas and theories and then you can duke it out and fight it out and then go listen to these podcasts that are very funny.
[00:25:03] The Nephilim are the likely origins of what we kind of began to understand would be like Greek and Roman gods. So all mythology has its origins typically in real people and real events, but they just get exaggerated and expanded over time.
[00:25:19] Many people think that the Nephilim were these original godlike or larger than life figures. And this is where the origin of the Greek and Roman God mythology came from. If you were to meet a first century Roman, most of them believed wholeheartedly to their bones that these gods were real.
[00:25:41] The Nephilim in Noah's day were so evil and so pervasive that they had to be utterly and completely destroyed in the flood. There is an idea that I don't think it's totally crazy. Like if I get to heaven and God says this is true, I'll go sweet. And if he says it's not true, I'll go cool. But the idea that the Nephilim hated humanity in the image of God so much that they infected the human race with this evil bloodline, and that it was so pervasive that the only human left unaffected or righteous or pure was this guy named Noah. And so that Noah was the one human set apart. So God had to destroy the entire world because they were so infected with this evil, demonic bloodline, then you should be asking, well, then why did they exist after the flood? And the Bible has a really interesting, like, subtext to it that, if you follow, would appear something went on with Ham's wife. So you get off the boat and you have Noah, and do you remember which son was the one to uncover his nakedness and do something evil? It was Ham. And then you kind of follow Ham's lineage. And do you know the Sodomites and the Gomorites, Sodom and Gomorrah, they're all in the lineage of Ham. In fact, they were so evil that they had to be completely obliterated man, woman and child because the level of evil was so pervasive. They're also Hamites. And then you know where they were living? In the land of Canaan. And guess what you find in the land of Canaan. This is the land promised to Abraham hundreds of years prior for the people of God. If you were, like, I don't know, demonic, where would you live?
[00:27:28] Maybe I would go to the land promised to God's people and destroy it. Or I would go to the land promised to God's people and claim it as our own. And so what's interesting is you have all of these Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites. They're all from the descendancy of Ham. All of them also through this guy named Anak, who is a descendant of Ham as well. All of them land over here. Now, here's what's striking about the Bible. This is gonna be weird for some of you, but the Bible talks about giants, large people, just as a fact. It doesn't even, like, challenge it. It just talks about it as if they were there. Like, they're not even, like. Like, unashamed to talk about it. We talk about it and we're like, that's weird. It must be some weird interpretive issue. And I'll show you this here. But it's like they're called the Rephaim, they're called the Nephilim. They're called the sons of Anak. And sometimes they're just called giants.
[00:28:18] I want you to see this. In Genesis chapter 6, verse 5, it seems that whatever the Nephilim, in fact this is the result.
[00:28:24] The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention, thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
[00:28:38] We keep going. And In Deuteronomy chapter 9, we find Joshua and Caleb reflecting on the report of the spies.
[00:28:48] Never once do they say anywhere that what the spies said about the giants was wrong.
[00:28:56] They never once correct them at all.
[00:28:58] The only thing they correct is their lack of confidence in Yahweh to destroy them.
[00:29:04] For fun, let's just keep going here. When David kills Goliath, how big was Goliath? He wasn't normal. 8, 9, 10ft, right? Not as probably big as some of the old Nephilim before the flood. But you see, this bloodline is there and David's got a whole bunch of stones, five of them kills Goliath and then who does he kill right after that?
[00:29:26] Goliath's four brothers from the same bloodline. 2 Samuel 21:16. Here's another one.
[00:29:32] Ishbi Benob, one of the descendants of the giants. What? They're just talking about it like oh yeah, it's one of the descendants of the giants. You know those guys? No, I don't. I don't know who the giants are. Okay, whose spear weighed 300 shekels? That's 10 pounds. That's a 10 pound spearhead on a seven to nine foot spear shaft. You just tried taking a 10 foot, throwing it like a spear. Good luck. This person's very strong.
[00:29:57] And who is armed with a new sword? Who wanted to kill David? Amos 2, 9.
[00:30:03] God says, yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite. That's one of the tribes in Canaan, the promised land before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars and who is strong as the oak. All right, let's bring all this together.
[00:30:16] What does all this mean?
[00:30:19] Wherever you find these bloodlines, you find.
[00:30:23] By bloodline I mean Ham, the sons of Anak, and large people.
[00:30:27] You find child sacrifice gross and non consensual sexual sin worse than anything you're going to find online.
[00:30:36] Demon worship and evil unrestrained.
[00:30:42] People get all up in arms, genocide. God told them to go in and kill all the women, children, et cetera. In the land of Canaan.
[00:30:50] They are not like any human being alive today in terms of the extent of evil that these cultures were capable of. Now did they have Nephilim blood? I don't know. Were they related to Anakin, Ham, etc. For sure. Were there very large people there? Yeah, absolutely. But the level of evil, intense evil amongst these people was so pervasive that this is flood 2.0. They're going into the promised land to erase these people because they've been so infected with evil that to leave them alive is only to leave alive evil to do unbelievable terror to the next generations.
[00:31:26] I want you to look at this text in Joshua 14 with me, and this. We're gonna come now back to Joshua and Caleb with a little bit of Nephilim talk, okay?
[00:31:35] When Caleb was 85 years old, Caleb got to go into the promised land. And I want you to listen to what Caleb says to Joshua. He says in 1411, I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me.
[00:31:54] My strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and for coming. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day.
[00:32:04] For you heard on that day how the Anakim, by the way, that's their word for giants, were there with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out, just as the Lord said. 85 years old, 40 years after numbers 13 and 14, and Caleb is still wholeheartedly following after Yahweh.
[00:32:31] Now, what do faithless people do when God tells them to do something scary and petrifying?
[00:32:41] They freak out.
[00:32:42] They grumble, they complain, they make excuses.
[00:32:48] And I get it.
[00:32:49] The Nephilim are scary.
[00:32:52] If God told you to go fight large people, bigger than you, twice your size or more, you'd be scared.
[00:32:59] And this is one of those moments where, yeah, your fear is understandable, but fear cannot erase faith and confidence. And by the way, they had one of the greatest reminders ever. They got to walk through the parting of the Red Sea while God destroyed a whole bunch of Egyptian armies. I don't know about you, but that would give me enough faith to keep going for, like, five lifetimes. And they're like a year or two past this, and they can't seem to remember how God came through at the very last second in an unbelievably miraculous way.
[00:33:29] Look at numbers 14 1.
[00:33:31] Then all the congregation raised a loud cry. These people are so irritating.
[00:33:38] And the people wept that night, and all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, would that we have died in the land of Egypt and. Or would that we had died in this wilderness. So they're not just attacking Moses and Aaron now in verse three, they're going to attack God. Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword?
[00:34:05] Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? And they said to one another, let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.
[00:34:18] What do you do if you are Moses and Aaron?
[00:34:24] There are some decisions that you or others make that when you do them, you can't undo them.
[00:34:32] No, I'm sorry will make it right.
[00:34:36] You can be forgiven.
[00:34:38] But the problem is still there.
[00:34:40] And here's what Moses and Aaron and Joshua and Caleb know.
[00:34:45] They know that the last people to grumble and rebel all died.
[00:34:49] And now they're looking at every single person in the congregation. And they are afraid that the Lord is going to wipe out the entirety of the nation of Israel because of their grumbling, their complaining. And they are now officially rejecting Yahweh. Not just Moses and Aaron, but Yahweh as their God and leader.
[00:35:11] Verse 5. Something truly heartbreaking occurs. It says, Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the people of Israel. And Joshua the son of nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land. They tore their clothes expecting that the Lord at any moment is going to come through this nation and kill the lot of them because he has warned them.
[00:35:40] Verse 7. The question is, what do you say to a whole bunch of people who have rejected you and the Lord who are spouting out untruths or half truths?
[00:35:52] You give them the whole truth, and here's what they said.
[00:35:56] They said to all the congregation of the people of Israel. The land which we pass through to spy out, this is Joshua and Caleb. It's an exceedingly good land. And if the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us. A land that flows with milk and honey. It's a dreamland. It is everything you could ever want for your family and for generations. Like, look what we brought back to you. Look at what the Lord has created for you to bless you.
[00:36:24] What else do you tell people who are rebellious in the middle of their rebellion? You have to warn them.
[00:36:31] Verse 9. They say, Only do not rebel against the Lord. Why? Because you're all going to die. Everybody who rebels loses. You can't do this. And do not fear the people of the Land for their bread, for us. They're not going to devour us, we're going to eat them.
[00:36:45] And their protection is removed from them.
[00:36:48] For the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. And what do rebellious people do to authorities who enact discipline or warning?
[00:37:00] Well, verse 10, then all the congregation said to stone them with stones.
[00:37:08] And at this point the Lord's like, we're done. And the Lord intervenes and says, but the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of the meeting to all the people of Israel. In verse 11, here's what the Lord says.
[00:37:19] The Lord said to Moses, how long will this people despise me?
[00:37:25] How long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them. And I will make of you, Moses, a name greater and mightier than they.
[00:37:42] Moses is the meekest man on the earth, as we learned a couple weeks ago. And what does the meekest man on the earth do but prays for them?
[00:37:50] And Moses is not going to be able to change God's mind about disciplining them.
[00:37:55] Every single one of these Israelites 20 years and older, except for Joshua and Caleb, would die in the wilderness over a 40 year period.
[00:38:05] But Moses prayed, God, don't destroy them now. And God heard Moses prayer. And God said, okay, I hear you, but the end is still going to be the same. They are standing at the edge of the promised land. And then the Lord says to Moses, turn around and go back toward the red. So now the people of Israel, they don't actually want to go back into the wilderness. Who knows what they actually wanted?
[00:38:28] So then God tells them, here's your fate. They don't like it, of course not. So then they get up the next day and they say, we're going to go take the land.
[00:38:37] And Moses says, no, the land is not for you. The discipline has been enacted. Do not do it. The Lord will not go with you. If you go up into that land, you will die. And a large group of them went up anyways and they all got slaughtered there. Then the 10 of the 12 spies, they also all died that day.
[00:38:57] It's like they're so rebellious. They won't follow God when he says go, and they won't follow him when he says stop. And here's the problem with rebellion. You when your state of rebellion, you are your own God. You are the one who gets to tell you what to do. Only you. Nobody tells a rebellious person what do to what to do.
[00:39:16] And here's one of the biggest challenges, this spirit of rebellion. Many of us have a story, before we came to Christ, of a rebellious spirit that God had to break.
[00:39:26] But if we're being honest, there are still parts of rebellion in our life where we know what the Lord wants for us. And we go, no, I'm gonna do it my way.
[00:39:36] And here's one of the most challenging things for a rebel to do.
[00:39:42] One, to say, I'm sorry.
[00:39:45] Rebels hate owning their stuff.
[00:39:49] Resist it.
[00:39:51] I'm sorry that you felt that way is the most you'll get from a rebel.
[00:39:56] Number two, acknowledging anyone as their God and Lord apart from themselves.
[00:40:03] And so here's the anecdote or the antidote, sorry to these rebels.
[00:40:07] Confess your sins and make Jesus your God. And by the way, every single rebel in this room who became a Christian, we all became Christians in the same way. We confessed our sins and we made Jesus our God.
[00:40:22] We said, we're no longer gonna be the God of our life. I am no longer gonna be the one that does what I want, how I want, when I want, where I want. But I am gonna follow Jesus and let his word and spirit guide me to what is true, objective, and real. All rebels, same next step for every single one of us. Confess your sins and make Jesus your God. If you're here and you have never trusted in Christ, you have never told him you're sorry for your sins, I have great news. In the Old Testament, God would kill the rebels.
[00:40:54] Here now, he is offering forgiveness, repair, salvation, himself, relationship. That's a pretty incredible deal.
[00:41:05] And here's the deal, rebels. In order for them to receive forgiveness and reconciliation with God, you're gonna have to do the two hardest things you'll ever do for your entire life.
[00:41:15] You gotta say you're sorry and own your stuff, and you gotta make Jesus your God and take yourself off the throne.
[00:41:23] And for those of us in this room that we're Christians, like, we've already done that. Like, big picture, we believe Jesus.
[00:41:29] But like seasons of rebellion, we can fall back into, can't we?
[00:41:33] We forget who the God of our life really is. And maybe as we're reading about Israel and their sin and their rebellion, you're looking in your own heart and you're like, I have started to ignore what God wants.
[00:41:47] I am now doing things that I want, the way I want, when I want it. I am now looking at God's word as optional. And the hard part about rebellion is that it starts small and it's cumulative, you know what I mean? The more you do it, the easier it gets to sin. And so my encouragement for every one of us, though, is we have two.
[00:42:07] Tell him you're sorry. This is a season we want to walk into of confession and repentance and put him back on the throne.
[00:42:15] Because here's the option. Rebels.
[00:42:19] Your option is say you're sorry and put him on the throne or go to hell.
[00:42:25] Like, there's not a middle ground.
[00:42:27] I wish there was, but there's not.
[00:42:29] And you might say, that's judgmental. I don't like that. That doesn't feel right. When you stand before a judge and the judge casts a sentence, you don't get to go, I don't believe you exist, Judge.
[00:42:40] The judge wins.
[00:42:43] And so here you are with a real Jesus, giving all rebels two choices. Say you're sorry and made Jesus your God, or rebel.
[00:42:54] Guys, I don't know about you, but it feels really foolish to keep rebelling when you can have forgiveness and reconciliation with God and the blessing of the promised land that God has for those who follow him. Amen. Amen. We usually end our message with silhouettes, but I spent, like, way too long on the nephilim, so I hope you enjoyed that.
[00:43:12] I want to take a moment and I want to pray for you. And.
[00:43:16] Yeah, just my prayer. Let's just pray. Father, if there is a spirit of rebellion that has overtaken any of us, God, would you give us eyes to see that?
[00:43:28] Lord, sometimes that is one of the hardest things to see.
[00:43:32] And God, I pray that you would give us the courage to confess and to take ourselves off the throne.
[00:43:39] Lord, if there's someone here who's never trusted in you, and maybe they realize today that they are a rebel against you, God, would you give them the courage to say they're sorry and to put Jesus on the throne?
[00:43:52] I thank you, God, for giving us Jesus, whose death paid for our sins and resurrection is such a beautiful reminder that he is exactly, exactly who he said he was. The son of God, who shed blood, covers sin, who has the power to be raised from the dead and to raise us from the dead as well. So, Lord, we pray all of this. We pray it expectantly and hopefully with such gratitude to you. We pray it all in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
