Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign church.
[00:00:07] Good morning. Good morning. Hey. If I have not met you, my name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here. And I want to invite you, if you would open up your Bibles to the Book of Numbers. We're going to be in chapter 20. And I want to start off, and I want to share with you a non biblical proverb. So if you remember what a proverb is. A proverb is something that is generally true, mostly true, true almost all the time. Of course there are exceptions, but it's kind of a general rule of life. So for those of you who you don't like dealing with your emotions, and you kind of like taking your emotions and stuffing them deep down inside and not dealing with them, you're gonna hate this proverb, you're gonna hate this sermon. But I can just, I can tell you with confidence you're going to be fine. Okay. All right, here's the proverb.
[00:00:55] Most people have one sin, one loss, and one hurt that even though you overcome, never leave you.
[00:01:08] So I've listened to a lot of stories, and I know that until I have heard the core loss, the core hurt, and the core sin, I probably haven't gotten to the deepest part of. Of someone's story.
[00:01:26] Let's talk about each of these for just a moment. Let's talk about a course sin struggle.
[00:01:32] This is the sin struggle that has kind of been with you for a long time. Benefit of the doubt. You have fought this thing, you have overcome this thing.
[00:01:43] You have had seasons, and God willing, right now, this is one of those seasons where you've contained the sin, you've protected yourself from from this sin. But you know deep down inside, the moment you stop protecting yourself, this thing's coming right back.
[00:02:00] All right, let's talk about the core hurt.
[00:02:04] You can forgive, you can work through it. You can release the person or the people who harmed you.
[00:02:14] You can create the distance that you have to create from unwell people. You can live a life free of bitterness and madness, malice and sadness.
[00:02:25] But if you're honest, just the thought of them kind of just brings back all of these feels. And so because you don't always want to think about them, you just push it down. You're like, okay, I can't deal with that now. But just even the thought of that person or those people.
[00:02:43] Let's talk about core loss.
[00:02:46] There are some people, places and things that are so important to you that when you lose them through death or moving or catastrophe or something else, really just the thought of it changes Your entire emotional disposition.
[00:03:04] You can grieve, you can actually do all the right things. You can live an incredible life.
[00:03:13] But the loss of this person, Placer thing, it just kind of never, never leaves you.
[00:03:19] So some of you right now, you're like, wow, Pastor Michael, you just brought up a lot. And even right now, kind of the Holy Spirit is bringing some things up into your brain, and you have a couple options. You're like, I don't know if I can think about this and listen to the sermon. Right? So you're stuck, right? We're gonna have to figure out how to do both. Okay.
[00:03:38] Most relationships you will pretty quickly, with a little bit of time, you'll probably figure out someone's core hurt and their core loss. And by the way, if you think people don't know, they probably know because we tend to just wear these things that come out of our mouth. It's like, kind of hard to hide most of the time.
[00:03:58] But the hardest thing to get to in a relationship is somebody being vulnerable and transparent about their core sin struggle. Now, some of you, you might be here, your mom and dad might be here, your husband or your wife or your best friends or your grandchildren. And if you don't know what your core sin struggle is, you can always just go ask them and they'll give you a good lead. A couple things, I'm sure. So with this kind of context in mind, Numbers, chapter 20.
[00:04:22] Sin, hurt, and loss are all going to converge in Moses's life all at the same time. And. And I'll just tell you in the front end, the consequences for him are going to be devastating.
[00:04:35] Numbers, chapter 20. It is one of those chapters that, you know what, if you've been around the Bible a little bit, you're probably pretty familiar with.
[00:04:41] But if you kind of just slow down and you ponder this chapter, the more you ponder this chapter, the sad the chapter becomes.
[00:04:52] So I want to set some relevant context for you. And so a couple pieces. Number one, between chapters 19, chapter 19 and chapter 20, roughly 37ish years have passed. And so if you remember the last message we gave, the last narrative, there was rebellion and a whole bunch of people died, right? And they're going to have to be now in the wilderness for 40 years. Now, like, literally the text just skips over all the 40 years, and here we are, right? Like, we are now dealing with the grand or the children of all of the people who perish. Okay, so relevant context number two, the chapter in verse one, it opens up with the death of Moses Beloved sister Miriam. And this is here to really set kind of the emotional context for what happens in numbers 20.
[00:05:40] Number three, the chapter closes with the death of Aaron, Moses, beloved brother. And if you remember Moses, Miriam, and Aaron, at the beginning of the Exodus, they were the ones who led the nation of Israel. Okay, so two of the three core leaders of Israel, they die in chapter 20.
[00:05:59] And number four, Moses is now dealing with the children of the rebellious generation. And we don't know a ton about these kids, so this narrative is really the first little bit of info we're gonna get about, like, did they inherit the spirit of rebellion and complaining and grumbling that mom and dad and grandma and grandpa had? All right, so Numbers chapter 20, verse 2 says, now there was no water for the congregation, and they assembled themselves. And you got to pay attention to all these words together against Moses and against Aaron, they. You'd hope that they would have learned by now that organized coups and rebellion against God's chosen leaders, Moses and Aaron, didn't really go that well for their par and grandparents. And so clearly, maybe they have not learned their lesson yet. But verse three says the people quarreled with Moses and said, would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord.
[00:07:03] Like, like father, like son, like grandfather, like grandson.
[00:07:08] Now, something worth noting and kind of before we go on, like, when you read the story of these kids, parents and grandparents, before God ever judged he was very, very gracious to give war after warning, after warning, after warning after warning. Okay, so what you're going to find is that even though these kids and grandkids are incarnating the sin of their parents, God is not going to kill all of them because he has not warned them yet. So they're going to have to learn by personal experience that God is merciful. So they're not all going to die, just so you don't have to worry about that before we get to the end. Verse 4, though, their complaining continues.
[00:07:43] Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness that we should die here, both we and our cattle? And why have you made us come out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place?
[00:07:59] It is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, and there is no water to. To drink, Lord Jesus, verse 6.
[00:08:11] Then Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting, and they fell on their faces, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.
[00:08:24] Now, verse seven, I need you to pay very close attention to the Words that I'm bolding because they're going to become important.
[00:08:30] Verse 7.
[00:08:31] The Lord spoke to Moses saying, take the staff and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron, your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water.
[00:08:49] So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle. So two details I don't want you to miss. One you're probably familiar with and one likely you're not. Here's the first detail.
[00:09:03] In order to get the water out of the rock, what is Moses commanded to do? He's commanded to speak to the rock. Tell the rock. Right. So if you go back, like four decades, there was another circumstance where Moses had to get water of a rock. And the instruction then was, hit the rock once. Now we're four decades later, and here's the command. You speak to the rock. You don't hit the rock. You speak to the rock. Good. Got it. Detail number two. In order to get the water out of the rock, what is Moses commanded to take with him? The answer is very simple. The staff.
[00:09:42] The staff is not just a useful tool for a shepherd, but I want you to think about ancient Israel. The staff for Moses is sort of like the scepter of a king. Whoever has the staff carries with himself the authority of the king. So in other words, Moses is going to bring in a staff that is going to carry with it some level of authority. And verse nine gives us a really important detail about this staff.
[00:10:08] It says, Moses took the staff from before the Lord as he commanded him.
[00:10:16] I'm guessing you have not probably spent hours or days of your life studying staffs in the Torah and in the Old Testament. Okay? But there's more than one. Moses has a staff, and Aaron has a staff.
[00:10:28] And God is very, very clear. I want you to go and I want you to get Aaron's staff. But Aaron's staff is unique.
[00:10:35] If you go back to one of the last narratives that we taught on, Pastor Dean taught on Korah's Rebellion. They were rebelling against the authority of Moses and of Aaron. And one of the ways that God communicated. Now, these are my chosen leaders, is they had Aaron's staff. And Aaron's staff budded flowers, right? Remember that? And so it was such a public, miraculous thing that God said, I want you to take Aaron's staff, put it into the Ark of the Covenant. The box, not the boat. Put it in there as a memorial of my affirmation of your leadership, of God's miraculous protection and of judgment. Right. So this staff, Aaron's staff, is in the Ark, okay? And so this is the staff. He's like, I want you to go back and I want you to get that staff. You pull it out of the ark, and this is the one that I want you to use. Now, we're gonna infer here a little bit, but it seems very reasonable that almost none of these Israelites have ever seen this staff before.
[00:11:37] It is very reasonable that Aaron wasn't walking around with the staff because it was put into the Ark of the Covenant. And so, like, probably rumors had spread about Korah's Rebellion and all the people who died and the staff that budded. And so now here we are, and Moses pulls out this staff, and it is a very likely response from the majority of the people.
[00:11:57] So the stories were true.
[00:12:00] Interesting.
[00:12:01] After 37 years, right, you can start to maybe begin to doubt the veracity of some of the, quote, miraculous stories from the generation before you.
[00:12:12] Let's come back to this point that we made at the beginning of the message.
[00:12:17] Most people have one sin, one loss, and one hurt that even though you overcome, never leave you.
[00:12:24] Before we get into the next verses, I really do need to set some of this context for you.
[00:12:31] Let's look at each of these. Maybe through Moses's lens. Number one is hurt. Could we pretty much agree that Moses has been, I would say, emotionally hurt in multiple circumstances throughout his, I don't know, 40 years traveling with these ingrates. We're going to go for sure.
[00:12:48] But there is no physical location in all of the wilderness as painful as the place they are at in numbers, chapter 20.
[00:13:03] Numbers, chapter 20. They are in a place called Kadesh.
[00:13:07] And if you go back in time, Kadesh is where Israel landed. And they sent out the 12 spies into the promised land. And of those 12, 10 gave back and gave in evil, faithless report about God in the land.
[00:13:21] This. This was the place that the last time they were here. They are on the cusp, the very edge of the Promised Land, looking into all of the incredible things that God has for them. This was the place where Moses, after, like, all of this time in Midian and all of this time, like, leading the people out, was going to receive the Promised Blessing. This is the place where Moses lost the Promised Blessing right here in Kadesh. And he gets to the very edge, and because of the sin of other people, he had to turn around and go back into the wilderness for 40, 40 years. Let's talk about loss.
[00:13:59] This chapter started off with Moses losing his beloved sister Miriam and all of this is happening in Kadesh. And by the way, let's talk about Moses core sin.
[00:14:11] If you don't know this, Moses is the primary author of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.
[00:14:16] And one of the things that the Torah and all of the Bible do is they do not hide the people of God's sin. They are very honest and they are blunt, even though sometimes they do great things. Every single spiritual leader that is not Jesus has a sin struggle and they mess up big time. And so here's what you find. Moses as Moses pens his own story, Moses actually communicates throughout his own story regularly what his core sin is. If you kind of start paying attention to his words.
[00:14:51] Moses core sin is unrestrained anger. And I want to just give you a flyover of some of the different times that Moses is dropping these clues in the text.
[00:15:03] It starts off in Exodus chapter 2, where out of unrestrained anger, Moses kills the Egyptian who is oppressing the people of Israel while they are slaves. Could we just agree for a moment and call that unrestrained anger? Probably wasn't glorifying to God not the right thing to do. But here what you see when you actually get to meet the man. Moses is this passionate man who is quick to anger and rage.
[00:15:27] Forty years later, now you're hoping there's some spiritual growth and transformation.
[00:15:32] Exodus chapter 11, verse 8. After announcing the final plague to Pharaoh, it says he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. Exodus 16:20. When some people kept the manna overnight, it bred worms and stank and Moses was angry with them. Exodus 32:9. The golden calf. Remember, Moses goes up on the mountain. He's gone for a long time. And the people are like, we want to worship the gods of Egypt. And Aaron is like, oh sure, I'll make you a golden calf. And so he comes down and it says, Moses anger burned hot. And he threw the tablets out of his hands and he broke them. And what's really funny is that he smashes the tablets into small little pieces, burns them, grinds it down to a powder and scatters it all over the water and makes the people of Israel drink the very idol that they were worshiping.
[00:16:18] Leviticus chapter 10, verse 16. Nadab and Abihu, after their death, when the sin offering was mishandled, communicates Moses was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar number 16 during Korah's rebellion, Moses was very angry and prays that God would not regard their offering. And let's just be really clear about most of these they're legitimate things to be angry at. The Bible in the New Testament, Paul says, be angry and do not sin. So it's good to be angry. God is angry at times, we are angry at times. It is right to be angry. But what Moses is communicating beyond all of the other emotions he could experience is he's letting you, the reader, know that this is a regular theme in his life. And it starts out by him having unrestrained anger and being forced into the wilderness of Midian for 40 years before God shows up to him in a burning bush. And for the first time, it seems in 40 years, this sin of unrestrained anger is now going to come back to him.
[00:17:17] When you understand the context for Moses and this event in Kadesh and what he does next, you're now going to begin to understand Moses was probably dealing with a lot. It's a place where his core hurt, his core loss, and his core sin are all converging in one moment.
[00:17:35] Look at verse 10. I want you to notice four angry actions that Moses takes. Number one.
[00:17:41] Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock. And he said to them, hear now, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock? And the, the first thing I want you to notice is Moses's tone.
[00:17:59] Moses gets very irritated with Israel, but he typically doesn't speak to them with this level of anger. But I want you to second notice Moses's word choice in verse 10. He says, shall we bring water for you out of this rock? And who is he referring to? Not Yahweh, he's referring to himself and to Aaron. And by the way, if water comes out of this rock, who is the one to make the water come out of the rock?
[00:18:31] It's God. In fact, the New Testament says that it was Christ who was the rock. Like Christ is our provider. And so what we're watching right now is that in his anger, he is using a tone that is not normal. And then already now we're watching him begin to take credit for something that only God deserves the credit for.
[00:18:51] Now, can we just agree for a moment when you're filled with rage and anger, that you're probably not your most clear headed self.
[00:18:58] Anybody ever done something that they regret when they're really, really angry?
[00:19:02] Everybody? Good. You're not very responsive to that one. But I think some of you are like, yep, yep, yep, got it.
[00:19:08] Verse 11. Here's the third thing. Moses lifted up his hand.
[00:19:13] And Moses is acting now somehow as if the movement of his hand has some kind of power to do something. And some people have surmised that he is actually incarnating some of the physical actions of a Egyptian magician before they do some miraculous work.
[00:19:30] But fourth, and this is probably the most important here, Moses struck the rock with his staff. How many times? Everybody.
[00:19:38] Twice.
[00:19:40] And God's so gracious, even when leaders mess up, he still blesses his people. Says, and water came out abundantly. The congregation drank, and their livestock. Let's just be redundant. The command was what?
[00:19:55] Speak, not hit the rock. And definitely not hit the rock twice. And so here's what is being communicated to you.
[00:20:04] Moses is out of control. Let me just summarize this. Moses screams at the people, takes credit for what God is about to do, and starts beating this rock.
[00:20:16] And God is not to be dishonored. Amen.
[00:20:21] Not a lot of amen on that one. Amen.
[00:20:24] God's words are not to be ignored. God's leaders are not to be out of control. Give a hearty amen on that one. Amen.
[00:20:33] We are never allowed to take credit for what God does.
[00:20:38] Let me give you an illustration that might help you understand why this isn't just some guy who just had a bad day and hit him around twice. Who cares? No big deal. Okay, well, you can imagine it's a baptism Sunday here at Village Church, and you're right here, okay? And Pastor Dean is on the stage, and Pastor Dean is communicating to you in the loving way he does. Here's what baptism is and what it's not. So if you're new, you kind of like know what baptism is. And then we have the pastor and somebody who's about to be baptized, and they stand right over here in the front, right? And as Dean's talking, the person who is going to be baptized leans over and says to the pastor, and they say, man, why didn't you think about the water? Like, it's freezing cold. What is wrong with you?
[00:21:20] And the pastor's holding it in and then says, you know what? Like, if you had thought about this, we could have done this at Dave and Julian Dioho's house where all the other baptisms take place. Why are we doing it here? I don't want to do this in front of all these people. It's at 9:45. It's on the live stream. What were you thinking, Pastor? Then you know what? If I could do this over, I would probably just ask Pastor Dean to do it because he's the one who cared for me. Anyways, Pastor Dean gets done. He sits down. We're going to do the baptism, they get up and what are you feeling? If you're the pastor in that moment, could we just say anger person gets up, they stand on the edge and this pastor double fists shoves them in the back, right into the water and says, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and walks out of the room.
[00:22:13] It's funny because it hopefully will never happen.
[00:22:18] But in that moment, sure, hopefully that pastor is going to get clear headed.
[00:22:26] Hopefully that pastor before the end of the service is going to get up and they are going to repent and apologize on the live stream where they did it.
[00:22:34] But I can tell you that that pastor probably had a whole bunch of unresolved issues going on.
[00:22:41] I could probably tell you that that person was going through a lot in that moment.
[00:22:46] I can probably guarantee you that that was not one of their proudest moments. And if they were to really just kind of unveil their heart before you, you'd be like, yeah, you've got a lot of unresolved issues, buddy. Like, that was a bold, ugly, disgusting, unloving move. I think you either need to be let go or you need a lot of time off.
[00:23:04] I want to come back to Moses for a moment.
[00:23:07] Here's the way Psalm 106 describes what Moses did.
[00:23:12] 106, verse 32. They Israelite in the wilderness here. They angered him at the waters of Meribah. And I love the way they say this. And it went ill with Moses, sure, on their account.
[00:23:25] For they made his spirit bitter and he spoke rashly with his lips. And in case you're unaware, the author identifies that it's anger, but it's a specific kind of anger. It's bitterness. So bitterness is on the anger spectrum of emotions and bitterness corrupts you from the inside out.
[00:23:45] And so the experience with these people corrupted him so internally that it came out. It's like whack a mole. You think you deal with an issue, but if you don't deal with it, it just comes out in other ways. Now, two weeks ago I preached a sermon nobody wanted to hear.
[00:24:01] But here's the premise.
[00:24:03] Followers of Jesus do not make excuses because of our feelings.
[00:24:07] We take full responsibility for our own behavior.
[00:24:12] And the pastor who double fist pushed that person getting baptized, that ungrateful baptizee, right, has to take full responsibility for their behavior. And Moses dishonoring God, taking credit for what God did, angrily lashing out on the people with his words and the rock with the staff that represented the authority of God.
[00:24:39] Moses will now have to take full responsibility for his utter failure in spiritual leadership. Verse 12. The consequences of this are just devastating. It says. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not believe me to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.
[00:25:07] These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the Lord.
[00:25:12] And through them, he showed himself holy.
[00:25:19] I want you to just put yourself in Moses shoes for a moment, because probably most of us have done something really dumb at one point in our life where we had to reap the consequences for it.
[00:25:28] Moses has been waiting for 40 years.
[00:25:33] This promised land was taken from him because of the sin of these people.
[00:25:40] Now he is here, and their children are driving him up a wall and pushing him to his worst self. He has spent 40 years living in the aftermath of the consequences of other people's sin. Eating manna, leading an insufferable group of ingrates. 40 years, just building more and more excitement with every year about the possibility of entering into the promised land. And now, in this moment, he forfeits all of it. Don't get me wrong, when you go to heaven, you're going to meet Moses.
[00:26:13] But Moses lost the blessing of the Promised land because he gave himself over to the sin of his youth, unrestrained anger, and in the process, dishonored God. What is also so devastating about this discipline is that it wasn't just Moses who lost the blessing. It was also his brother, Aaron.
[00:26:36] Aaron also. As you start to read through Aaron's story in the Torah, what you find is Aaron also has a core sin, and his core sin is different than Moses'. Aaron's core sin, I would call this passivity. And so, again, as the people of Israel, like, they are wanting a golden calf, Aaron sits there and makes them this golden calf in the absence of Moses. And then he's just like, how many people wanted that? He's just passive. And then if you fast forward a couple weeks ago, we preached on Miriam. Moses, sister talks to Aaron, and basically, I'm gonna give you like the Michael feeling version says, we're gonna throw a coup against him because we could do a better job than him. And we have the Holy Spirit too. And Aaron goes, okay, sure, sounds good, right? And he doesn't stand up to her. And now here we are again. So Aaron is hearing all of the same instructions. Aaron knows exactly what to do. And Moses and Aaron's Staff speak to the rock, water comes out. And when Moses lifts up his hand, right, and then he takes credit for what God is about to do, Aaron is supposed to say, no, wait, stop. That's not what you're supposed to do. And then after he hit the rock once, Aaron was supposed to stop and say, moses, what are you doing? Stop. And you know what he did? Nothing. Again and again. I'm into one of Saddam. He's Moses, you know, like Aaron. Stop being passive.
[00:28:00] And now, because of his passivity, he is going to bear the consequences of his lifelong sin struggle.
[00:28:07] Let's read the fate of Aaron in verse 23.
[00:28:11] And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron at Mount Hor, on the border of the land of Edom, let Aaron be gathered to his people, for he shall not enter the land that I have given to the people of Israel. Because you now, in the Hebrew, it's important, it is plural, it is not singular.
[00:28:32] Because you, Moses, and Aaron, rebelled against my command at the waters of Meribah.
[00:28:41] Verse 25.
[00:28:43] Take Aaron and Eliezer, his son, and bring them up to Mount Horror and strip Aaron of his garments and put them on Eliezer, his son. Can you feel the weight and the emotion of losing your position of spiritual leadership in the presence of your son, losing the blessing of the promised land in the presence of your son, taking off the holy garments of the priest in the presence of your son, and giving them and putting them on your son as the next high priest. And then it says, an Aaron shall be gathered to his people and shall die there.
[00:29:25] Verse 27. Moses did as the Lord commanded. And they went up to Mount Hore in the sight of all the congregation.
[00:29:30] And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on Eliezer, his son. And Aaron died there on the top of the mountain.
[00:29:38] Then Moses and Eliezer came down from the mountain. And when the congregation saw that Aaron had perished, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron. 30 days.
[00:29:51] If you're new, you're thinking, this guy is a bummer preacher.
[00:29:57] And I agree.
[00:30:00] Could I bring you into some of the context of village church right now and why we're preaching on numbers 20?
[00:30:06] We're preaching on this because we've already preached on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and most of Numbers. So we're going through the narratives, but we warned you that this was going to get progressively more and more difficult with every week. The stories just get deeper and they get uglier and sadder. But one of the reasons we're teaching in these series of dark, ugly narratives is because we want to enter into a season as a church of confession, of repentance and of making hard decision decisions. Because like, like them. When we don't deal with our stuff, it's like whack. A mole just comes out in every other part of our life.
[00:30:39] And so we're spending the Last half of 2025 just pursuing this spirit of confession and repentance and making some of those decisions that we've postponed. The Bible says that the eyes of the Lord, they go to and fro, looking throughout the earth for those whose heart are blameless toward him. And I would really, really love for the eyes of the Lord to stop at my family to stop at this church and say, you guys aren't perfect for sure. There's only one perfect person. That was Jesus.
[00:31:06] But your hearts are humble toward the Lord. I want the eyes of the Lord to stop and I want to be. I want him to look at us and say, I can use you. And so we enter this season so that we look in and it's not fun. Nobody ever like, oh yeah, I get to look at all my core hurt and loss and sin and have to face it head on and make some decisions. That stinks. But guess what? This is what we do as followers of Christ. We look at reality and we face it. We don't dig our head in the sand as if it doesn't happen. And so one of the goals in these, so what's is to help us look in. So let me share with you these things. 3. Number one.
[00:31:38] When you arrive at your own Kadesh, be clear headed about your next step and its consequences.
[00:31:46] I shared with you earlier that Kadesh is this wilderness, this place that is right on the the edge of the promised land. Kadesh is in the English language. We could call this a liminal place. L I M I N A L Liminal place. A liminal place is a threshold.
[00:32:04] It is a space between two fates.
[00:32:08] And you don't stay in liminal places for forever.
[00:32:11] Kadesh is a place where decisions need to be made, where people are tested.
[00:32:19] Will I disobey God and run away from Jesus? Or will I obey God and run to Jesus?
[00:32:28] And I want to be clear like Kadesh. When you're at Kadesh, you're never going to wonder. If you're in this place. You will know without a shadow of a doubt. Kadesh decisions are explicit and life altering moments of decision.
[00:32:41] And you have two options. Follow Jesus, you move in the direction of Jesus or you rebel.
[00:32:48] You will never wonder if you are in a Kadesh moment. Let me give you some examples.
[00:32:55] There are some people that we date and we marry and we know deep down inside this is a Kadesh person.
[00:33:03] I can continue to pursue this and by pursuing it, I will be moving away from Jesus, or I can walk away from this person and move toward Jesus and you know exactly what I'm talking about.
[00:33:16] Or there are moments, and many of us as adults have been in these moments where not just drugs, but certain drugs are literally right in front of you.
[00:33:26] And you know if you cross this line, this is going to be a three to five plus year journey away from the Lord. And so you have this moment where you say, I am either going to choose and walk away or I'm going to walk toward Jesus.
[00:33:43] There are moments sexually and with your sexuality when you know that there are lines that if you cross, are hard to go back from. And you know that if I move this direction, I am intentionally choosing to reject Christ and move in a direction away from him. But you also know what is required to move toward Jesus.
[00:34:05] These are not vague moments. These are crystal clear, life altering, trajectory setting moments.
[00:34:13] Yes, you can be forgiven, but you can't undo the consequences of these moments.
[00:34:19] For those who grew up Christian, here's what you know.
[00:34:24] You know that to follow Jesus is hard.
[00:34:27] Like, I've never met anybody who was like, yeah, going against my flesh and against the world and all the people who don't love Jesus. It was super easy. It's really, really hard at first.
[00:34:36] But what is on the other side of Kadesh?
[00:34:39] If you follow the Lord, it is into the promised land and it is blessing.
[00:34:45] And here's the deal. For the Israelites, it was way easier for them to complain, grumble, and go back into Egypt, right? That was easy.
[00:34:52] But things that are easy often have judgment. So you can take the easier route, but if you follow the easy route, you're walking right into judgment. But if you follow the Lord, it will be hard.
[00:35:03] But that is the only way you're ever gonna experience the blessing of being in the relationship with Jesus.
[00:35:10] Somebody once said there's, oh, his name is Jesus. Who cares if you gain the world but lose your soul?
[00:35:19] So number two seasons of loss and hurt make us uniquely vulnerable to those old sins that we have overcome.
[00:35:30] One of the questions that could be asked is like, okay, why does the Bible have so many stories like this? And so I want to actually read you a few texts of scripture to help you explain why we like really Belabor these numbers. 20 kinds of stories. Psalm 102, verse 18 says this.
[00:35:46] Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord. Romans 15:4. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.
[00:36:02] First Corinthians 10:6. Now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. 1 Corinthians 10:11. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. So let me ask you a simple question. I already know the answer, but I want you to just say it out loud. Do you want to be a fool?
[00:36:28] No. Good, good, good. There might be one or two people like, yeah, I'm gonna be a fool. Okay, good for you. You can be a fool.
[00:36:34] Fools see the errors and the stupidity of others and the consequences of those decisions, and they repeat them. And they almost always say the following.
[00:36:49] I'm one of those guys who has to learn the hard way.
[00:36:54] No, you're not. You're a fool.
[00:36:57] You do not need to learn the hard way. That is dumb. Never say that again.
[00:37:01] The wise person, here's what they say. They're going to look at the stupidity of those who've gone before them and the judgment and say, I'm going to do something different.
[00:37:14] I'm going to follow the Lord.
[00:37:17] Like that is what the wise person does.
[00:37:21] And so be instructed by numbers 20, be instructed by Moses. You can be at the end of your life and give in to that age old sin.
[00:37:32] Let me bring this home. People who don't deal with loss and grief, spiritually and relationally erode.
[00:37:39] When you don't deal with them, you don't bring them before the Lord. When you don't pursue and experience healing, which by the way is hard and takes time, people spiritually and relationally erode. People who don't deal with their hurt and seek healing. Do you know what they almost always do Hurt people. What? Hurt people. And they almost always hurt people in the way they were hurt. It's a weird, dark, strange thing about undealt with and unhealed hurt.
[00:38:04] And people who don't face their lifelong sin struggle. Do what?
[00:38:08] They become slaves to that sin. And they live secret, secret lives feeling shame and guilt, which is not the life of flourishing that God wants for you and me. Somebody once said, and I appreciated this, if you don't deal with your demons, your demons will raise your children.
[00:38:30] So at number three, where is God calling you to repent in your personal life in your family and or in your church.
[00:38:41] Three simple questions. And you guys should be really grateful that we don't have community groups this week. And these are not going to be in your group questions. You should probably deal with these things alone before you start shouting them out to a group.
[00:38:53] What is the unresolved hurt?
[00:38:58] And maybe it's even resolved. Have you been able to identify the one hurt that kind of stands above the rest that is sort of just major chapter in your story?
[00:39:09] What is the loss that you have not yet faced?
[00:39:14] Maybe you didn't have the energy or the guts to really face it, so you just shoved it down and you never dealt with it. And what's the loss that God's asking you to just kind of go face to face with and begin to grieve?
[00:39:26] And then what is the sin that lingers?
[00:39:30] And again, if we play whack a mole, it's just gonna come up in other areas of our life.
[00:39:34] And if you don't heal from these things, these things will come back to destroy you. Your soul, your relationships. What does God want? Why are we dealing with these hard things? God wants you and me, this generation and the next, to flourish spiritually.
[00:39:51] But the pathway to flourishing spiritually is dealing with the stuff.
[00:39:57] And if you don't deal with it, then we're just going to hand these issues to the next generation. And I don't know about you, I'm not interested in that. I want to be able to face the demons, the hurt, the loss, the sin, and my own life. And for you to do the same so that we can experience the life of flourishing, the abundant life that Jesus actually wants for us. Amen. Village church. Amen. It's just gonna get more and more hard. So here we go, narratives and numbers. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for Moses transparency to drop all of these clues, to tell honest stories about himself murdering somebody, all the way to his unrestrained anger with his words and credit taking and God. Even if Moses had left it out, I'm confident Joshua would have made sure those stories got in there. But Lord, thank you for reminding us again that no one is perfect but Jesus. And so thank you that you never leave us, you never forsake us. And even as we face and try to give vocabulary and heal from and deal with loss and sin and hurt God, that you never forsake us, you are always with us, every step of the way.
[00:41:05] Lord, as we remember communion, we also just remember that you are so good and you are so faithful that when we were in our sin, you pursued us and you paid the price for our sins so that we could be forgiven. Not just so that we can go to heaven, but we can have life, abundant life now that goes into all of eternity. Lord, we love you and we are so thankful to be here and to study your word and to apply it, no matter how hard it is. We thank you. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.
