Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Good morning. 945.
[00:00:07] Good morning. Good morning. If I have not had the opportunity to meet you, my name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here at the village church. And this morning we are starting a brand new series called Narratives in Numbers. So we will not be teaching through the entire book of numbers, because previously, if you've been with us for a little bit, we taught through Genesis, we taught through Exodus. The most riveting sermon you've ever experienced in your life series was in Leviticus. Right. And the majority of the text in numbers that deal with the tabernacle or the law or the organization of the tribes of Israel, we've actually already dealt with that. And so what we're doing is we're going to be jumping into the narratives that are in numbers and Deuteronomy. And so this will take us to the end of this year, right up till Christmas with a couple week hiatus here and there. Now, why this series now? Okay, so logically, when you do Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus, what's next?
[00:01:08] Numbers. But we could have taught on anything. But I want to share with you three reasons why @ this time we chose this series.
[00:01:17] By the third reason we're going to kind of put this together and how it relates to the book of Numbers. Okay. First, in our local church, God has given us the privilege to steward an extended season of discipling spiritually young souls.
[00:01:39] Today we have five baptisms. Four of the five are in their 20s. And all five is just. They're beautiful testimonies of what God is doing in people's lives.
[00:01:50] This morning there's gonna be roughly 150 to 200 fourth graders and under that will either be in services or in village kids. And this awesome privilege to pour the word of God and the gospel and to build relationships with adults who love the Lord. Our five, six, which is just our ministry to fifth and sixth graders. They kind of have a youth group here on Sunday nights. We just had about 15 or 20 fifth graders come into that.
[00:02:20] Good luck. Fifth and sixth grade, five, six leaders. You guys are awesome, talking about the energy of a bunch of kids. But we have this really beautiful privilege just to take these fifth and sixth grade students into uniquely invested in them. And then we had roughly 30 sixth graders become seventh graders and come into Forge, which is our seventh through 12th grade ministry. And in June, I think they had over 80 kids per night. It's just a awesome opportunity to see how God is working and bringing together young people this next generation. And we have this Privilege to steward all of these souls for this season. And then we're gonna have hundreds of kids here at vbs.
[00:02:59] These are sacred opportunities from the Lord. And not just that. Like, if you sit down with Nadine and our connections team, the amount of adults that have been visiting village church attending for some time, many of them are not believers. They are trying to figure out faith. Some of them recently have had kids and they realize they need to be grounded spiritually. Some people grew up in church and walked away, and now they're kind of coming back. And they're just people in general in this kind of post Covid era. Doesn't it feel good to say post Covid who are spiritually curious and they're walking through our doors and they're hanging out here for some time? And so we have been in this extended season where we have the privilege to steward these hearts and these souls. And not just that. I've got a whole bunch of notes on this. Pastor Dean leads a rooted class, which if you're particularly like, if you're younger in the, it's good for everybody. But if you're younger in the faith, it just roots you and grounds you in God's word. And discipleship essential. And Pastor Dean actually realized we have more people that need to go through this and we have leaders to offer it. And so these are really special opportunities to steward what God is bringing into our midst. All right. The second reason we're preaching on narratives and numbers, and again, this is all gonna connect to numbers, I promise, is we have multiple future altering decisions ahead of us as a church.
[00:04:24] And more than ever, we need the Lord's clear guidance.
[00:04:30] So since 2019, every single plan to move forward, the Lord has thrown a curveball into that plan.
[00:04:39] And at first, every one of the curve balls is profoundly annoying.
[00:04:46] Then time goes on and we learn the lessons. Like, the Lord allows us to go a little bit and says, all right, you've learned what you needed to learn. We're going to shift. And so every one of the lessons has proved to be unbelievably invaluable. And one of it's not just the only, but one of the biggest decisions that we're trying to figure out is how do we fit everyone here and steward every soul and resource and really just follow the Lord wherever he wants to lead? I'm actually not prepping you for something specific. Right. I'm just more putting this out as a leadership. We are regularly wrestling through these questions.
[00:05:20] Number three, post Covid, we need to cleanse our hands and purify our hearts so that we might most glorify God in this next season.
[00:05:33] Covid, quote, unquote, is done.
[00:05:36] But the negative effects on our church spiritually have been drastic on individuals, on marriages, on families, on relationships.
[00:05:51] And I have not talked to a single person yet who has left this last season unscathed.
[00:05:58] And every single one of us had to come face to face, not just with the worst of everybody in our life, but the worst in ourselves.
[00:06:11] So we take these. Let's circle, bring this all back together.
[00:06:16] We are asking that the rest of 2025 might be a season in our local church of confession, of repentance, and of making some of those really hard decisions that you have been putting off.
[00:06:32] Our prayer is that we might do this so that we can go into 2026 purifying ourselves from the sin that we have all, every one of us tolerated in the wake of all the chaos of COVID Now, you might be sitting here and you might be thinking, what sin?
[00:06:49] I don't know.
[00:06:50] I don't know what your life looks like, but I can't tell you. I've sat and listened to enough of us and observed enough to know that this season has been really, really hard. And there gets to a point where we have to say, we are going to choose to lay aside the sins that maybe we've allowed to enter into our lives, to put them aside and to consecrate ourselves to the Lord.
[00:07:12] How does this relate to narratives and numbers?
[00:07:15] I'm glad you asked. Great question.
[00:07:16] I want to share with you a key that unlocks the narratives of the stories in the book of numbers. In the book of Deuteronomy, almost every story in Numbers in Deuteronomy was written to make the same point.
[00:07:30] God was just to not allow the wilderness generation into the promised land.
[00:07:40] If you don't know how the story goes, let me burst your bubble before you read it.
[00:07:44] 40 years, the entire generation lost two men, possibly their families.
[00:07:50] 40 years. They wandered in the desert, in the wilderness as a judgment of God. And every single one of them failed to obtain the promised land that was promised to the people of Israel.
[00:08:04] Story after story after story. It reveals their deep sin, their rebellion, their lack of faith, their overall unrepentance. And they forfeited the blessing, and their children inherited the land, not them.
[00:08:21] I don't want to be the wilderness generation.
[00:08:25] Here's what I've observed, and I think our leadership would testify to this.
[00:08:29] In every season of stewardship, the Lord is evaluating and Testing us to see if we are going to be good stewards.
[00:08:37] And I believe that the Lord is watching our church, our leadership, and those who call Village Church home and saying, can I trust you with whatever is next?
[00:08:45] And one of the ways that he's doing that, he's giving us this unbelievable privilege to steward spiritually young souls of all different ages.
[00:08:52] And I don't want the Lord to look at me and say, you and this generation who are responsible for. For Village Church acquiesce our responsibility. The Lord is going to make sure that every soul has a shepherd and every soul is cared for. The Lord loves his people way more than we ever could. But I don't want to be the wilderness generation. What I would love to do is I would love for this generation to hand off the ministry of Village Church to the next generation. Faithful stewards following the Lord wherever he wills, whatever that might be. And so, as we go through this season, what I want to ask you to do is go through the rest of 2025 and every week, the Israelites. Each of these stories are going to highlight very real, very practical sense.
[00:09:34] Some of them are just seemingly small and insignificant. But then you see the way the Lord responds, and you realize it's a big deal. To the heart of the Lord. The eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the earth, looking to see those whom he can bless, trust, empower, steward.
[00:09:49] The eyes of the Lord are watching. I just want the Lord to look at Village Church, to look inside of our hearts as individuals, as families, as a church family, and to be found faithful. And so I wanna go on this journey with you. I'm ask the Lord through every one of these narratives, open up my heart, dig in, show me the parts that I've been avoiding and not wanting to.
[00:10:06] And so as we lead by example, we want to ask you to do the following as well. So before we jump into numbers, chapter 11. Could I just take a minute and pray for this season in this series? Father, thank you for your mercy when we deserve judgment.
[00:10:24] I want to thank you for your grace and your kindness. I do. I thank you that we wake up every day and your mercies are new. And you give us second chances and third chances and 100 chances and a million chances. And so, God, it is really good to be sons and daughters of you, the most high King, because you are kind and you are gracious.
[00:10:43] Lord, we want to be found faithful with our own souls, with our own families, and with the ministry that you give us here in our church. Family.
[00:10:52] And so God, if there are sins that we need to repent of so that we can be clear headed and pure hearted before you never perfect because only Jesus is that. But Lord, if we can pursue and become more like Jesus, we want that Lord. We confess that there are idols we don't even know we have.
[00:11:09] There are patterns of life that your word calls sin and we call normal.
[00:11:13] Lord, there are things that we've just gotten into as a result of COVID and stress and being locked down and all the stuff that comes with the last couple years that maybe we tolerate but you're kind of done with it. And so Holy Spirit, we just invite you. Would you help each one of us as individuals, as families, as marriages and as a church family, would you help us to become more holy and more like Christ? And when we fail, which we do every day, thank you for the blood of Christ that covers us and your unconditional faithful love to every one of us who trusted in Jesus. So we love you. We pray all of this in Jesus name. Amen Church, Amen. All right, open up your bibles. Numbers chapter 11. I want to set up the contacts for numbers 11.
[00:11:56] A lot of these narratives, they began around Exodus 19. And so if you guys remember the Israelites, they were slaves in Egypt and they came to the Red Sea and they're like, oh no, we're gonna die. And the Lord parts it and so three months later they find themselves at Mount Sinai and they're gonna spend about an entire year at Mount Sinai. Exodus 20 to Leviticus 27. Israel stays there, they receive the law instructions on the tabernacle. We get to the book of Numbers in chapters one through ten. What you find is that the camp of Israel, it's organized by tribes around the tabernacle. The census is taken and they're preparing themselves in this year to move into the promised land. We get to numbers 10.
[00:12:42] The cloud moves. And when the cloud moves, the people move. And so the cloud moves. And now they are beginning to take their next steps on their journey to, to the promised land. We get to Numbers, chapter 11, verse 1. Remember, they've just left Mount Sinai says this and the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes.
[00:13:06] And when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outlying parts of.
[00:13:20] There's a lot here and so I want to highlight a couple things to help us really understand what's going on. I want you to notice first, who's complaining. This is the people. Specifically, this is the Israelites, which is going to become important in a few minutes because the Israelites are not the only people at this campsite moving from Sinai to the promised land.
[00:13:40] Number two, I want you to notice what they're complaining about. And the word is their misfortunes. And I think if we're a little bit empathetic, like, it would be hard to have the entire life that you knew, kind of like uprooted. You're going to a foreign land, you're learning how to worship this new God, get to know them. You're in the wilderness, which there is not a lot of food or water or sustenance, and somehow you have to feed a million plus people in a land where there's nothing. So, like you can understand misfortune. This has got to be a really challenging and probably very boring period of time for them. I want you to notice, number three, where the Lord sent the fire.
[00:14:19] Text says, some outlying parts of the camp. Okay, why send fire there? And the answer becomes clear as numbers 11 goes on. But the answer is simple, because the outlying parts of the camp is where the complaints originated from.
[00:14:38] And do you know who lives on the outlying parts of the camp?
[00:14:44] It's not the Israelites. It's actually a group of people. Verse 4 gives them a name. And the name is called the rabble. Isn't that a great name? The rabble. And I really actually appreciate the translators using this English word. Let me just read you the definition of rabble in English, and it's a good one. A rabble is a disorderly crowd or mob of people, often with the sense of being rowdy, unruly, or low class.
[00:15:11] So who were the rabble? Earlier in the book of Exodus 12:38, they told us that a mixed multitude also went up with them. So it wasn't just the Israelites. There was a whole bunch of other people who went. Who went with them. The rabble would be non Israelites who left Egypt with the Hebrews. This could have been foreign slaves. Imagine if you were a slave in Egypt and these Hebrew slaves got freed and you're like, I'm going with them.
[00:15:35] Egyptians who sympathize with Israel. And they're like, clearly our gods are weak and pathetic and this God of Israel is strong. So I'm going to go with the winners and not the losers. There's people maybe looking for a better life. All of these are part of those who live on the outlying part of the camp. And we know that those who lived on the outlying part of the camp were not Israelites. How do we know this? Because if they were Israelites, they would live in the camp according to their.
[00:16:00] And so the rabble, this group of outlying regions of the. Of the people of God are these people who are on the outside, spiritually, literally, physically, socially.
[00:16:14] But they want the blessings that come with being in the orbit of God's people. We're going to explore this next week because next week we're going to still be in numbers 11. But there's a progression that happens here.
[00:16:27] The complaining, it starts with the rabble on the outskirts.
[00:16:33] And tent by tent, it makes its way all the way through, all the way through to the very center of the camp. And who lives in the very center of the camp?
[00:16:46] God does, in the tabernacle. And so it's this idea that if God had ears, the complaining started from the outside, and it moved its way in and it got close enough that God could hear it within earshot. And by the way, who lived within earshot of the tabernacle?
[00:17:03] It was the Levites and the priests.
[00:17:06] So the rabble, these people who don't love God and don't have the best interest of God's people in mind are complaining. And this complaint is contagious. And it's making its way all the way through to the very tense, to the very front of the presence.
[00:17:21] Now go Back to numbers 11. I want you to notice another detail.
[00:17:25] I want you to notice that the Lord didn't kill anyone. Now, that may sound funny, but when you start reading in numbers 11, later in the chapter, a bunch of people are gonna die. But in this situation, the Lord didn't kill anybody because God is slow to judgment. Okay, if you parachute into numbers chapter 11, you might, like, read this and think to yourself, wow, God is quick to anger.
[00:17:50] Wow, God's really trite.
[00:17:52] Wow, God must be, like, egotistic, egotistical. Because if he can't, like, even just hear somebody complain, he's just gotta, like, react like this. Like, wow, God's got a short temper here.
[00:18:02] Well, you might fail to miss that. This is not, like, the only time this happens. Okay? So I wanna actually take you back in time a little bit, and I'm gonna show you the progression of the complaints of the people of God. I'll put this on the screen for you. But it goes back to Exodus 14. They're at the Red Sea, and the people are panicking because they're stuck between the Egyptian army and the sea. And so the Lord of course does what he does. He parts the sea. But before he does that, here's what they said. It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.
[00:18:32] And so the Lord parts the sea, and they see that God provides. Exodus 15.
[00:18:37] There was bitter water at a place that would become called Marah.
[00:18:41] They're three days into their journey. Three days. And the text says this. The people grumbled against Moses saying, what shall we drink?
[00:18:49] And so God made the bitter water sweet. The very next chapter, the man and the quail Exodus 16. The whole congregation is grumbling. And they said, you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.
[00:19:03] So what does God do? He provides manna and quail so that they can eat. Exodus 17. There is no water at this place they arrive at called Rephidim. And the people quarrel with Moses. And then they said, why did you bring us out of Egypt? To kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst. Dramatic group of people, don't you think?
[00:19:22] So what does God do? God responds, and he gives them water from a rock at Horeb. Now, the first two instances of complaining, God seems to have been patient, empathetic. He met their needs.
[00:19:36] The third instance is interesting. This is with the manna and the quail.
[00:19:40] God saw their complaining as a lack of faith.
[00:19:45] And so God begins to test them to see if they really do trust Him.
[00:19:50] In the fourth instance, Moses is now pushed to the edge. And Moses rebukes the people.
[00:19:58] So by the time we get to numbers 11, is this the first time this has happened?
[00:20:02] Not at all. And God has already been patient with this over and over again. And now he's been testing them, and now Moses has rebuked them, and now the Lord is going to rebuke them, and the fire is going to come out of probably, it seems, the tent. Because in the rest of the Torah, the fire, when there's fire comes out of the tent, and it's the fire of judgment. So it seems that there's the. The fire of judgment comes out of the tent. They all know it's from the Lord, and it starts burning up parts of the outlying parts of the camp. And the people know the Lord is not happy. Okay, why did their complaint make God so angry? You could say God asked for it. He enabled them because they've learned a lesson. If we just complain loud enough, God gives us what we want.
[00:20:48] This circumstance is worse than just complaining about something trite.
[00:20:56] The complaining is starting to take a darker tone.
[00:21:01] Number One, the complaining is coming from those who do not love God, who only want to be in the orbit of God and his people if God makes their life better.
[00:21:12] This complaining isn't just about a group of people who are upset because things are harder than they had hoped for.
[00:21:21] These complaints are behind God's back, and they are directed at casting doubt over God's kind, good leadership over the people of Israel. All right, so if you're not aware, 14 students, seven leaders, we got back from a mission trip to Germany. We just got back Saturday night, and beautiful country. Germany's unbelievable. But I have a few major complaints and I'll share with you. One, there's no ice cubes. Like, barely anywhere at all.
[00:21:55] Like, at all. Oh, air conditioning? Nope.
[00:21:59] Fans?
[00:22:00] Nope. You would think that German engineers would be like, well, it's really hot. We're sweating all the time. And so maybe we could make some fans with our incredible. We're the best engineers on the planet, so we could do this. Nope. Didn't even appeared. Didn't even cross their minds.
[00:22:13] Let me confess.
[00:22:16] Our leaders and our students, we complained, but we did not go.
[00:22:25] God, if you were good, you would have put it in the hearts of German engineers.
[00:22:32] You would have thought about this day back then. You would not have let this entire system and culture be developed to appreciate lukewarm stuff in the middle of heat.
[00:22:44] God, how could you? You don't love me. Nobody did that. We all were like, hey, God, this is annoying. Hey, each other, this is annoying. And you deal with it. You suck it up and you live right.
[00:22:55] Here's the point.
[00:22:56] We know who's fully responsible for no ice, no fans, and no air conditioning. It's the Germans.
[00:23:03] It's not God.
[00:23:06] There are a lot of jokes I want to make right now, and you are very welcome that I am restraining myself, complaining about stupid stuff. It's not the best. And oftentimes it does borderline, like, move into sin.
[00:23:18] But that isn't what pushed God over the edge here. The rabble are not asking, God, why did you allow these misfortunes? God, what are you up to? No, the rabble are accusing God. The rabble are going behind God's back. The rabble are going to God's people and creating doubt in the heart of God's people about the goodness, the kindness and the leadership of, of their faithful God. And in case you're newer to scriptures, by the way, we humans, we are very susceptible to this. This goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. I'll show you this. In Genesis chapter three, verse four, says the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. In other words, I think God's lying to you. In verse 5 he says, For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. God knows you won't die. In fact, here's what the serpent is telling Eve. You can't trust him because he's just looking out for himself.
[00:24:22] He doesn't want you to be as strong as him.
[00:24:27] And so the first rabbler is the devil, creating discontent and disconnection and distrust between the heart of God and and his people.
[00:24:40] I want you to imagine this scenario, right?
[00:24:43] You're a mom and a dad. You're a family. You have a home. And then you invite somebody into your home and you feed them and you give them a room. Let's just go big. Let's just say you freed them from slavery, okay? Like everything they have is because you entered into their life. And then privately and secretly they start having conversations with your children behind your back saying, I don't really think your mom and dad have your best interest in mind. Actually you know those rules. I actually think they're afraid of you. I don't think they trust you.
[00:25:13] And you start plotting and putting these ideas into your kids minds. And you found out about this, what would you do?
[00:25:22] You'd open the door, you'd say goodbye, you're not welcome here because we don't let rabblers into this house.
[00:25:31] And God. This is now scenario five of which somehow the complaining spirit has gotten through the camp and God is not killing them yet, but just sending fire to warn them of what will come upon them if they don't quit this rabbling.
[00:25:47] Our God is slow to judgment and unbelievably patient. He's way more patient than any of us would be in our own home.
[00:25:56] So who are the rabble today? I want to break the rabble up into two categories. The first I would call a lowercase R rabble. The lowercase rabble is anyone fostering a spirit of discontentment in your life.
[00:26:12] So there's two kinds of discontentment. One is good and one's bad. The first kind is discontentment that leads to change.
[00:26:18] You look at something that just isn't right in you or someone else and you just know this is not the way God made it to be. And so you go to work. And discontentment that leads to good change. That is a positive experience.
[00:26:30] But then there's Something a bit darker. And it's discontentment that leads to a victim mentality.
[00:26:37] Victim mentality is a dark trap.
[00:26:41] And we live in a period of time where this is applauded amongst some groups in our cultural moment.
[00:26:50] I have never met a healthy community that reinforces victimhood as identity, but that is the cultural moment that we live in.
[00:27:04] Years ago, I won't say the name of the child. One of my children was 7 or 8 years old, ish. And I said the following phrase to them. I said, stop being a victim now. In my brain, they understood my words. And you know, sometimes you talk to your kids with like adult words and then you realize later, oh, they don't understand the words that I'm saying, okay, so stop being a victim now. This had been a pattern going for some time. So this is not the first time that my child heard me say, stop being a victim.
[00:27:36] So in this moment, my child responded with something very, very shocking.
[00:27:43] They yelled back at me and they said, I am not dead.
[00:27:49] I have not been murdered. I am alive.
[00:27:58] I was taken back and they got the definition of victim right, but not the way I'm right here.
[00:28:11] And they were so exasperated and I just laughed so hard. It was not the right moment to laugh, but it was like.
[00:28:19] So I asked, what do you think a victim is? And they gave me the right answer. And I said, you're right, but it's not just that. And I tried to explain it, and that was not the best moment to explain it. I just had to affirm to them, you are not murdered. You are fully alive.
[00:28:36] And I see this.
[00:28:43] You will not get through life without being treated terribly egregiously by someone.
[00:28:52] For most of us, it's going to be multiple people in our lives will do things to you or around you where you could say, I am a victim to their sin.
[00:29:02] This is everybody, the rabble.
[00:29:06] They want you to identify yourself, to make victimhood your identity rather than overcomer.
[00:29:16] And you'll find this. There will be people who will just. They will let you be the victim and affirm this. But that's not what the Lord wants. And discontentment.
[00:29:26] This is good, but not if you're always the perpetual and constant victim.
[00:29:33] The uppercase capital R rabble is anybody seeking to cast doubt over God's leadership in your life. You'll notice that discontentment will always find its way to negatively impacting your relationship with God. But there are people, capital R rabble, who their purpose in life is to create doubt over the goodness and kindness of God. In His Word, in your life. And I think the most effective rabble are on social media.
[00:29:59] They wake up every day with the intention of creating and casting doubt over the goodness and kindness of God and His Word. Too often they are teachers and professors. Rarely. But they're out there. There is a mom or a dad who doesn't love Jesus, and they are committed to making sure you do not have confidence in the God of scriptures.
[00:30:21] And the way the capital R rabble most effectively do this is through strategic questions. So, for example, why would God withhold from you?
[00:30:34] Why would God make you with these desires if he didn't want you to fulfill them? If God loved you, why would God allow you to go through this? Now I've got a whole bunch more. So here we go.
[00:30:49] Would you really want to worship a God who would send an innocent person to hell?
[00:30:54] Isn't it arrogant to claim that there's only one way to God? Who is God to say what's right and wrong for someone else? The Bible, it's been translated so many times. I mean, can you really trust it?
[00:31:05] Wouldn't it truly good God just accept everybody as they are?
[00:31:10] Why hasn't God answered your prayer yet?
[00:31:14] If God is so powerful, why is there so much evil in the world? He must not be strong enough to deal with it or he doesn't care. Take your pick.
[00:31:21] Is God really trying to protect you or is he just trying to control you?
[00:31:27] Don't you think that God, he just wants you to be happy?
[00:31:32] Do you see how insidious all of these questions are? They're designed to make your heart and mind doubt the goodness and the character of God and His leadership over your life.
[00:31:46] Let's watch this situation resolve in verse two.
[00:31:49] Then the people, they cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down. Okay, so I'm trying to imagine what the conversation was like between Moses and God. Like, hey, God, okay, so they want to go back to Egypt. Big surprise.
[00:32:09] And they're not a fan of, how do we say this? God, you, in general, could you, like, stop the fire so we can work things out?
[00:32:21] And the Lord kindly, graciously does because he's slow to judgment. And he gives chance after chance after chance after chance.
[00:32:30] Here's a little secret I've learned over the years. There are two kinds of complaints. The first kind, they're constructive complaints. Somebody comes up to you, they find a way that something could be better.
[00:32:40] That's great. Constructive complaints are wonderful. We all want the things that we lead to. Be able to do the best they can do for the most part. Good. We love constructive complaints. Stay with me. No, I'm kidding.
[00:32:51] The second kind of complaints are contagious complaints. It's like the flu or a cold. I don't really want to get sick.
[00:32:57] But they have this way of getting into us, and then they take root in us, and then we give birth to them by sharing them with other people. It's like these ideas and these mantras and these things that where my lack of faith and confidence in God. Now I give it to you, and then you have this lack of faith and confidence in God, and then you give it to somebody else. This kind of complaining is swept through the entire tent all the way to what are supposed to be the most spiritually mature people in the camp of Israel, the Levites and the priests.
[00:33:26] And so here's the resolution of verse three. So the name of that place was called Tabera. That means literally the place that was burned because the fire of the Lord burned among them.
[00:33:38] There's a whole lot more in numbers 11. We're going to get to that next week. So I'll pause here. I want to share with you3. So what's number one?
[00:33:45] Bring all your complaints to God.
[00:33:50] But as Eric said last week, check yourself before you complain about God.
[00:34:00] There's this, I would just say, interesting teaching that I have heard over the last 20 years from some pastors.
[00:34:08] And they'll say something to this degree.
[00:34:12] Take all your anger at God and yell at him.
[00:34:16] Tell him all the things you feel unload on him, because God can handle it.
[00:34:23] And let me be clear, God can handle it. God's not insecure. He's not, like, gonna get his feelings hurt.
[00:34:31] The problem is that in scripture, when this happens, it doesn't go well for the people.
[00:34:37] So Job was righteous until the very end of the Book of Job. I mean, right? His friends were putting terrible ideas into his brain, and somehow these really bad ideas get into his brain. And he says something that really provokes the Lord. And you get what appears to be the longest single rebuke to a person at the end of the Book of Job. And it's basically like, who are you, Job, to doubt God? God's kind leadership over your life? Were you there when? And literally by the end of this, Job says, I put my hand over my mouth. I'm so sorry. And then the Lord keeps going, and he's like, no, you haven't gotten the point yet.
[00:35:13] And so here's my point of saying this.
[00:35:16] Bring all your concerns to the Lord.
[00:35:19] And I think one of the best questions you can ask God over and over again is God, I don't understand why, like, I would like to make sense of this. Lord, what are you up to? Why is this happening? Telling him, I'm having a hard time trusting you like I want to trust you. I'm just like, he can handle all of that. But the moment we start accusing God, that's where things get into, I think, murky territory. You do not need to be in a position to accuse God. He has one accuser. It's the devil. He doesn't need another.
[00:35:46] And so our job is to come before the Lord and give him all of our concerns and questions and confusions.
[00:35:52] But my encouragement to you is if you want to have the highest chance of a response that is helpful, accusing God versus asking God, you're likely to get a better response if you ask him in a heart and spirit of humility. So at number two, I think we all have to come to grips with this, that we are remarkably susceptible to the rabble.
[00:36:17] As you grow in your faith, hopefully we become less susceptible to the rabble.
[00:36:23] But your children and your grandchildren who are younger in the faith, you may hear this cultural mantra. Doesn't God just want you to be happy? And you know immediately? It's a loaded question designed to trick and mislead.
[00:36:39] But sometimes younger people in the faith, they don't know. These cultural mantras are loaded and designed to trick you and to create disconnect and distrust between you and your God.
[00:36:49] And so even though you know the voice of the rabble, people who are younger in the faith don't always know that.
[00:36:57] And so we all have to come to grips with. We are all susceptible to this. It's a strategy that has worked since the Garden.
[00:37:06] And so God, the devil, has this way of taking people outside of the people of God, putting words, ideas, and questions into their mouth. And those questions start to permeate and infiltrate the people of God. And so look back at your younger years and ask yourself, what was I susceptible when I was maybe a teenager or a high school student or college, or in my early 20s when you first came to know the Lord. And I think identifying the places where you're uniquely susceptible is powerful. But also understand that the people you lead, the people that God's given you stewardship over, are also uniquely susceptible to this. Which is why we love to talk about our questions. Even if they're hard questions, bring them. I want to hear the things you're working through because I want to make sure that we are able to take the voice of the rabble, silence it, so that we can be thinking biblically, we can bring these concerns and let the word of God speak to them, not in a tricky way, but in a truthful way.
[00:38:00] So number three, where is God calling you to repent in your personal life, in your family and or in your church family? So as we teach through narratives and numbers, there will probably be a sow up most weeks that's very similar to this.
[00:38:17] Some of the sin struggles you're gonna look at and say, the Lord dealt with in my younger years, or that's not really an issue I have dealt with. But I have a hunch that for most of these weeks, there is a piece of this where the Lord is gonna maybe reveal something in your heart about discontent or a complaining spirit, or possibly even being a raveler yourself, taking your own personal issues and creating distrust in other people.
[00:38:43] So this is an opportunity where we just say, listen, we wanna spend 20, 25 and we wanna ask the Lord to do the hard work. And so every one of these narratives and stories, they poke at a different issue. This is one of the easier ones. They do get a little bit more, we'll say, intrusive and deep into the human condition.
[00:38:58] But take a moment and ask the Holy Spirit, Lord, am I subject to discontent, to complaining?
[00:39:06] Has my confidence in your leadership been broken?
[00:39:10] Do I trust you?
[00:39:13] Are there rabblers in my life?
[00:39:17] And here's the trick with we want to love everybody, but not everybody gets to speak into our mind, into our heart. Amen.
[00:39:24] And so we identify. Sometimes we have to look and say, this person or this group, they're rabblers. They don't love me. They're not for me. They're not trying to help me think rightly, truthfully, or biblically. And so we start to identify some of these things. And so maybe there's some rabblers in your life that you've given a lot of proximity to and you're like, you know what? I need to figure out how to take that voice away. And you might need some wisdom. Go talk to somebody who can give you advice on how to actually handle shifting the dynamics of that relationship. Some people need to be cut out of your life. Some people, it just needs to be shifted. Some people, a conversation needs to happen. But get the wisdom you need so that as the rabblers are in your life, you are able to handle them in a way that is loving, biblical, but also protects Your own mind and your heart and your relationship with God. Now maybe you're here and you, you're not a Christian.
[00:40:12] And you are like, I'm a rabbler, I'm discontent, I'm a complainer.
[00:40:18] Well, welcome to the human condition.
[00:40:21] And your sin has separated you from God. And what I love about the story of the Word, of God, of the Bible, is that God's hand is extended, offering forgiveness. And so if you were here and you were like, I am aware of my sin.
[00:40:35] God is offering you forgiveness. But you need to ask, and I wanna ask you, do you believe that Jesus Christ, that he paid for your sins on the cross? Do you believe that he was raised from the dead? And are you willing to come to God and say, I believe, would you forgive me? I want Jesus to pay the penalty for my sins on the cross in my place. And this is kind of the rule of forgiveness and reconciliation. You gotta ask for it before you receive it. So, so many people just think, I'm me, I'm awesome. God has to love me. You need to ask him to forgive you so that you can be in a relationship together. And just God would love the opportunity to cleanse you of your sins, to forgive you, to adopt you into his family, and to give you his Holy Spirit. That would be the greatest joy that God could have today in your life. So if today you are ready to make that decision and you're ready to come to him, you can do that and you can pray to him. There's no, like, special formula. Tell him you're sorry and you believe and then tell someone that you came to church with. We would just love to come alongside of you and help you figure out, all right, God and I, we need to be reconciled. And I need to figure out what it means to follow him. So we would love the privilege to help you take a next step as you figure out how to walk with Jesus as a follower of Christ in Advil Church. Amen. Let's pray together.
[00:41:51] Father, I'm going to say thank you for these narratives.
[00:41:55] People are people everywhere, all the time. Sin manifests millennia ago and today in all the same ways. And so, God, thank you that you know this. You've documented this for us. This is a mirror into our own hearts. We, every one of us, we have been discontent. We've been upset with you for not making our lives easier than we want them to be. We have allowed the struggles of life to create disconnection between us and you. But, Lord, we don't want that those are all the remnants of sin in us. And so God pray that you would help us to have such confidence in you and your leadership.
[00:42:34] But God, I also pray that if there are just ideas and mantras that have sunk into our brains and we can't shake them, would you give us the clarity and the courage to deal with those decisively so that we can release them and renew our trust in you? We love you God. We thank you for this time and your word. And we trust you to do in our own hearts and minds that only you can do. We pray all of this in Jesus name, Amen.
