The Story - Chapter 6

I apologize about the delay this morning. I don't know what happened to me. I have this watch on, took it off, was waiting for the baptism. I look at it and it said, well, 10 till 11. I thought, well, I got 10 more minutes. I mean, how many years have we been starting at 1045? I don't know. All of a sudden, I was out of order. That was completely uncalled for. Maybe that was an illustration. Have you ever said, I'll never do that again? Well, you learn from experience, don't you? You learn things that you do and you say, I'm never going to do that again because you know that didn't turn out exactly like you wanted it to turn out. We also learn from people around us. We watch their lives and we see the mistakes they make and we learn from those. We see the things that they do and we say, yeah, man, that was really good and I want to pattern my life after that. I want to change the way I do things so that I can be like that person. Watching people around us is a very important way by which we do learn. Now, all of the scriptures are given to us because it gives us a chance to look back over the history of God's dealing with people and to learn how it is that people have lived in obedience to God. We learn what it means to be able to have faith in God. Someone can stand in the baptistry and say, I promise I'm going to live my life in obedience to Christ. Well, Jody, farther along in life, knows a little bit more what that means. Ashley, starting out in her life, doesn't quite know everything that that means. But all of us learn from our own mistakes and the mistakes of others. What the Bible is talking to us about is how God deals with people who start out in a life of faith. What does it mean when a person says to God, I give you my life and I'm going to live doing the things you tell me are right. I'm going to avoid those things that you tell me are destructive to me. What does faith mean and how does it really work out? Well, to start, you have to come back to understand what God is doing in the world. Now, in the story that you're reading, you're reading about, they'll often talk about the upper story and the lower story. And that's helpful because it helps us see things that God sees differently than we might. But there's one thing about that that I'm a little cautious about and not really comfortable with. It's sort of like it's saying God is way up there, we're down here and there's a big gap between us. That isn't really what they mean. What they mean by the upper story is in the mind of God, there is a plan, a master plan about what he's trying to do in the world. It started at the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve turned their back on God and rebelled against him. And God began saying, I want to build a people who will trust me completely and totally, who will have faith in me. The word trust and faith are the same thing. I want to have people who will trust me. So whatever I tell them, however difficult it is, however hard it is, they will say, I believe you so much, God. I am going to do what you ask me to do. And so he went to this man Abram and he said, Abram, I'm going to build out of you a great nation. Now, I want you to trust me and follow me where I tell you I want you to go. That's the first thing God asked of him. Follow me, I'll guide you, follow me. Second thing he said is, I'm going to give you some land. The land for us today is not the same as it was in biblical times. It was the source of all food that they had to eat and the source of everything they could live on. It was a guarantee of God's providing for them. You follow me, do what I tell you, and I will give you the provision that you need for your life. And then he said, and there will be people who like you and I'll be their friends because they're friends of yours. And there'll be people that don't like you and hate you and they'll become my enemies as they're your enemies. I'll stand between you and them. I will protect you. And when your life is over, you will know that it's been spent well. Because here's what I'm going to do. Your descendants will be as numerous as the sand on the shores of the sea. You will have an impact on the entire world. And today, all around the world, people are talking about Abram. They're talking about God. They're reading his story and following God in faith. All that came true. And he said, this is my promise. But here's what I want from you. I want you to do exactly what I tell you to do. I want you to trust me. So whatever I ask, and however difficult it is, I want you to do it. And so the story started. Years and years later, the descendants of Abraham were in Egypt. And there they were in slavery. They asked God, God, remember the promise you made to Abram, our great ancestor. God said, I remember it. And now I'm going to come to help you. And he brought them out of that land and he took them to Mount Sinai. And he said, now, here's a time. There's 1, 2, 3 million. We don't know how many of them. The time has come for all of you to think about this again. And I'm going to tell you what I want you to do. I want you to promise me that you're willing to do whatever I ask you to do. If you're willing to do that, I'll promise you that I'll give you guidance through this wilderness to the land of promise. I promise you that you will have that land of promise that I promised Abram, your ancestor. I'll make your friends my friends and your enemies will be mine. And when all of this is over, the whole world will remember you and what you've done. The same promise he made to Abram. It's essentially the same promise he makes to every person in the world today. If you're willing to follow me, I'll guide your life. I'll place the Holy Spirit in you and tell you how to make good choices. I will provide for you. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything you need will be given to you. It's the same promise he gives to us. All he asks is faith. But faith is not easy to express. Because there come times when there are challenges in the life of a person that make it very difficult for them to actually trust God. I want to begin with a passage from Numbers chapter 11. If you have your Bible, you can open to that. If you have the story, you can open to page 71. And I want to read there for just a moment. Because in this story, we find out these people have just made a promise to God and said, We will do whatever you ask of us. Now they had in their own mind what God should do for them and what He wanted them to do for them. They had just finished this experience of receiving the Ten Commandments. They had rebelled against God and He had forgiven them and said, Okay, I'll accept you back and I'll start with you. Now the people complained. Numbers chapter 11 verse 1. Now the people complained about their hardship in the hearing of the Lord. And when He heard them, His anger was aroused. Then fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. When the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the Lord and the fire died down. So that place was called Taberna because the fire of the Lord had burned among them. What happened? They started out with such great trust in God. But they didn't quite understand what was going to happen. They thought because God had made a promise to protect them and provide for them and guide them, that of course He would guide them in all the ways that are comfortable and easy and convenient. But you know what God realized that they didn't know? He realized that these were people that had been slaves for 400 years. They didn't know how to fight. They weren't soldiers. He could have taken them up around the coast, which was a heavily populated area, and every time this million or two or three million people came trampling through the countryside, the people would be alarmed and armies would come to fight them, and they weren't prepared for this. The scripture says that. So He had to take them to the wilderness, a difficult place to travel. There was not much around. There were no people out there to fight them. Also, there were not any crops out there. Also, there was not very much water out there. And here they were trudging along through this abandoned, desolate place thinking, this is terrible. It was actually better than dying, but all they thought was this was not what we expected. Now I'll tell you something about faith. Faith means that you trust something you can't really see. You trust the promise of someone. God promised, I will guide you, and He was guiding them, but it wasn't quite what they thought He would ask them to do. They had in mind something far better than what they were experiencing. Now Jesus, when He called His own disciples, He gave us a clear warning. If anyone wants to come after Me, here's what you have to expect. You have to deny your own self-interest. You have to deny your own comfort. You have to deny your own convenience and follow Me. You have to take up your cross every single day. When you get up every morning, you have to be prepared to sacrifice doing what I ask you to do. He made it clear that the journey of faith was going to be difficult, hard, and painful. And He wanted them to understand this before they signed on. Living a life of faith is not easy because God asks you to do something you don't want to do. Stand in front of a group of people and say, I give my life to Jesus Christ. Go into the water to say, I'm living now. My past is over. My new life has started. Coming to the front of the church, saying, I today give myself to Jesus Christ. Taking your money when you say, what should I do about this Bible stick? And it comes in your mind a number and you say, oh no, I can't do that. So out of lack of faith, I didn't know God you were going to ask me to do these things. We get started grumbling, complaining. Even though God has forgiven us of our sins. Even though His Holy Spirit has come to reside within us. Even though we feel the joy of no longer being condemned by God, it doesn't take very long before we begin to face things we don't like. And there's a tremendous temptation to grumble about God. You know the scripture says God got mad when that happened? Angry. When Moses tells the story of the exodus in the book of Deuteronomy, and all that book is about this story of the travel that went through. It's kind of a repeat of what happened in Numbers and in Exodus. When Moses tells this story, 25 different times he said God was angry with His people. Every time He was angry with His people, it's because they lost their trust in Him. They started out saying okay we'll do anything you want, whatever you ask, any way you want to do it. We really believe that you have our best interest at heart. But when God's plan veered from theirs, they knew they were right and God was wrong. At the very heart of this loss of faith is a loss of trust in God. And saying to God I trust myself more than I trust you. That's what happens in the life of faith. And you know grumbling leads to grumbling. Now all God did here was start a little fire around the camp. No one seemed to have died. Maybe some people lost some property. But He was wanting to say I don't approve of this. And I'll show you something. Here's some fire. Get straightened out. Well the fire was over and they said we didn't lose anything. We're okay. I mean a little fire didn't hurt anything. And then immediately chapter 11 verse 4 page 72 in your story, the rabble with them began to crave other food. And again the Israelites started wailing and said, if only we had meat to eat. We remember the fish weighed in Egypt at no cost. All the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. But now we've lost our appetite. We never see anything but this manna. Just the manna. They didn't have any food in the wilderness. They didn't know what they were going to do. And God created something, a dish, especially for them. The scripture says that the manna was kind of like bread. It fell in the morning. They would get up and it would be all over the ground, white. They said it tasted like olive, something cooked in olive oil. That's kind of a specialty thing, isn't it? You know, I don't know much about cooking. But they said it tasted a little like coriander seed and a little bit like honey. Now that sounds a whole lot like a honey bun to me. I don't know about you, but to have a fresh honey bun every morning would not be necessarily negative in my eyes. But I suppose you had to eat it every day and every day and every day. You'd say, oh no, this old honey bun, I don't want that anymore. That's what they did. They complained about God's provision for them. See, the first time they complained about His guidance. The second they complained about His provision. They were rejecting the very promise that God said He would make for them. Not because He hadn't done it, but because it did not suit them. Now the word rabble here can mean either some of the people in the nation of Israel who were sort of on the edge, you know, rough guys, tough guys, hard to get along with, fighters. Or it could mean that they were the Egyptians that came along with them. When they left Egypt, there were some of the Egyptians that said, you guys have got something going for you. I want to go along with you. We don't know who it was, but there were some people on the outside, sort of not in the circle, who began to complain about the food. And soon everyone started complaining. Have you ever noticed this happens to you? You can be in a Sunday school class and one person can start griping and pretty soon everybody's griping. You can be at the house and your family and somebody starts griping and everybody starts griping. It's awfully easy to get caught into that. But see, you have here a key ingredient for God. I promised you I would provide for you. And so He made a special dish for them. They were the only ones to ever eat it. I've never cooked it again for anybody else in the world. We've never seen it. Especially for them. And they didn't want to eat it. I've never cooked a meal for anybody. I had my kids, you know, they're at home. One time my wife was gone and I fixed toast and burned it. And I just told the boys it was chocolate toast. That's about all I know about cooking. My youngest son said, you know, Dad, I don't care for that chocolate toast. I said, okay, I won't fix it again. But God fixed the meal and they were upset about it. It didn't suit what they wanted. There was so much of it they just weren't ready. So they were saying to God, I do not accept your provision. I'll tell you, when you start this walk of faith with God, He won't give you everything you want. I'll tell you that up front. He will give you everything you need. He will provide everything that you can really take care of. And the Bible warns us about looking at other people and begin to lust after the things that they have. What God asks us in faith is to say, God, what you've given me, I accept from you. Teach me to use it as I should. That's what faith means. Faith means following God no matter how hard it is. It means accepting what He's given you with a gracious spirit, believing that it's the best thing you can have. Faith is a matter of trust in the provision of God. The story continues in chapter 12 of the book of Numbers, beginning with verse 1. It's 73 and 4 in your book, The Story. In this instance, another issue arose. Moses had not been a very willing participant in this event with God. In fact, when he started, he said to God, I can't do it. I'm not a good speaker. So God said, OK, I'll give you your brother. He's a good speaker. He'll help you. And then his younger sister had a role in Moses' life. You know, she saved him from drowning when he was just a baby. So they start out through the wilderness, and Moses now is the person God speaks to. He stands in front of everybody and tells them, this is the words of God for you. He sets in a tent, and if anybody has problems, conflicts, they come to Moses, and he tells them God's direction for their life. Aaron, his brother, who he couldn't have done this with Pharaoh without Aaron, now has taken a back seat. His sister Miriam, who saved his life, she's now over here on the other side. She's not the key to this whole thing. And so they begin to look at Moses and say, he's not even a good speaker. This wouldn't even happen without me. Miriam says, he wouldn't even be alive without me. Why aren't we in positions of greater responsibility and authority? No one appreciates me. No one loves me the way I want to be loved. What they're looking at were themselves. So they went to Moses and said, who do you think you are? This is the story. Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he'd married a Cushite. Now that's what the beginning was. They attacked this marriage that he had to get to the real issue. Has the Lord spoken only through Moses, they asked. Hasn't he spoken through us? And the Lord heard this. Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else in the face of the earth. At once the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, come out to the tent of meeting, all three of you. This is where God came down and visited the people, and it was sort of like an invitation, we'd say, to the woodshed, you know, where God's going to deal with them right. So the three of them came out, and then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud, and he stood at the entrance of the tent and summons Aaron and Miriam. When both of them stepped forward, he said to them, listen to my words. I wonder what they thought. He's going to say, you're right. I've overlooked you. You're going to be a really important person. When a prophet of the Lord is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions. I speak to him in dreams. But this is not true of Moses, my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly, and not in riddles. He sees the form of the Lord. Why, then, were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? When I have chosen Moses as the leader, why were you afraid to go against what I said I wanted to do? Now, in this instance, the covenant shows up in two ways. One is that God said to his people, your enemies will be mine. And when Aaron and Miriam attacked Moses, he didn't do anything. He said, come and let the Lord settle this matter. One of the great things about faith is you don't have to worry about protecting yourself. God protects you. Moses should have looked at this situation. He could have looked at it and said, man, this is really going to divide this nation. This is going to tear us apart. Everybody is quarreling and griping about this, and now what's going to happen? You don't have to worry about the future because of the promise God has made. Your enemies will be my enemies. And when you live your life in faith and trust, you can have everyone in the world hate you, but as long as God is on your side, no one can destroy you. They may kill you, as they did Jesus, but he made Jesus the greatest name in all the world as a result of that one act that they did. They didn't destroy Jesus. They made his reputation flourish. The walk of faith sometimes leads us in places where we have deep and powerful enemies, people that are against us. The church sometimes finds its place in a world where everyone around hates you. There are people today in churches every Sunday who are afraid that bombs will be thrown in their building, and some of them all over the world will die this very day because they joined together to worship. But God is with them, and they do that in spite of the threat. You know why? They trust God. That's what he asks of us. No matter how difficult it gets out there, no matter how hard it is, no matter how dark and difficult it might be, believe that I will take care of you. So if you know you're supposed to pray for someone, you do it. If you know you're supposed to talk to someone about the Christian vision that you have or the life that you've lived, do it. You may be afraid of a lot of things, but God will stand between you and anything that really hurts you. God takes care of his people. No matter who your enemies are, no matter how powerful, I'll take care of them. There's another story in the Bible about people that rallied against Moses right after this. Some of the leaders of the whole nation of Israel came to him and said, We don't think you're doing the right thing. We need to be in charge. Moses said, Okay, come and meet me tomorrow. When they came to meet him, the earth opened up. Them, their families, their children, and their tent were swallowed up in a gap in the earth and crushed. God may not do that to your enemies, even though you might like for it to happen sometimes, but he will take care of you. That's his promise. You have to have such trust that you will face that believing that it will happen for you. You see, in every one of these circumstances, God is teaching them that their faith in him is not adequate. They're learning how hard it is to actually trust God. The final story comes in this section this week. The final story comes when they come to the land of promise. Finally, they make this long journey. They're there. Everything's ready for them to go. They send people in to canvass out this land. It's in chapter 13. In this situation, the people have been sent into the land of promise. They are looking over the land to see if it really is everything that God said it was going to be. And they found out it was. They came back with the produce from that land that was powerful. I think I've got this in Deuteronomy 13 is where this is. I didn't get my bookmark in here, but I'll find it sooner or later. When they came back, they said to the people, everything God said to us is actually true. We know that the land is fruitful. There's everything there that God promised it would be, but the reality is that there are people in that land that are bigger and stronger than we are. They're more powerful than anyone we've ever seen, and their strength is greater than ours. The people who went in were sure that this promise that God had made to them could not come to reality because of the enemies that they faced in that land, so great, so powerful, so strong. They said, these people in there are like giants, and when we compare ourselves to them, we are like grasshoppers. So they came back and said, every promise God has made to us about this land is true, but the one thing he didn't tell us is, the people there are greater than we are. I don't know of a time or place anywhere in the world where God's people haven't faced the very same situation. Can you imagine what it would have been like the 12 gathered around Jesus, and He said, now here's the deal. There are 11 of you left. I want you to go into all the world and make disciples. They didn't have a book to tell them how to do it. Jesus never gave them a plan as to how to accomplish it. They didn't have any money. Go into all the world and make disciples. What an impossible task that was. They could have sat down and said, well, I don't see any way in the world we can do this. We're going to sit here with 11 of us and we're going to read the Old Testament and we're going to talk about Jesus until the day we die. A lot of people want to do that. They like to have a group of friends that follow Jesus and sit down and talk about it. They're afraid out there in the world that all those people that don't want to follow Jesus are going to be mad at them. They're afraid that if you get out there, people are going to think you're stupid or foolish or an idiot. So they came back and said, this job is too big for us. Now, what they were saying to God was, we trust you for the little things, but we don't trust you for the big things. Whenever God made the covenant with them, he made a promise to say, I will take care of you. I will make sure that your life does not end in disaster. That's the final promise. You will have a tremendous impact on the world. You go into that land of promise and settle it as I told you you would, and the whole world will remember you. Now, I have to say that if you look at this story again, you can see the reality of what took place. What if they'd all died there? What would we have? The whole story that God had been working on would have ended. God has more stake in you doing what he tells you to do than you do. God had to say to them, now, because you've not been willing to do what I told you, you didn't trust me, you trusted yourself more than me, none of you will ever enter the kingdom of heaven. The plan that he has, I mean the promised land, the kingdom that he promised them. There are some choices you can make in your life that keep you from being a part of what God wants. And one of them is to say, I do not trust you, God. Now, your failure to trust God can come for a lot of reasons, because you see something out there that seems bigger than you, because there's something out there you don't want to get rid of, there's something out there that you want to do that you know God doesn't want you to do. All kinds of reasons to say to God, no. If you've heard of the kingdom of God, and you've heard of heaven, what God asks of you is, I want you to come and enter my kingdom. You can only enter it in one way, and that is when you say to me, I give my life to you. I've lived my life doing what I want to do, and the way I want to do it, but I've come to realize that I need you. Now, this happens to you when you come to church, you read the Bible, or you're thinking about God, and you say, you know, I need more in my life than I have. I don't have the answers that I need. This is God saying to you, come to me, and I'll give you what you look, what you need to have. I will guide you, so you'll be able to make the right choices for the first time in your life. I will give you the ability to see the things that are right and wrong. I will provide your need. I will protect you from anything that will crush you. And I'm going to send you on a mission that will change the lives of people in this world. You will be responsible for people going to heaven. I will make your name powerful. What I ask of you is to do what I tell you to do. And so if you've been thinking in your own mind, you know, I really need to commit my life to Christ. I need to start by saying my old life is over and start anew, like these who came today to testify about that. That is what I need. I want to warn you, it's not an easy journey. Sometimes you'll doubt God's judgment. Sometimes you think He's not providing right for you. Sometimes you'll think that the enemies out there are bigger than God knows about. But you just have to say, I'm going to keep on trusting you. That's all He asks. Maybe if you started on this journey, like the people of Israel, you got kind of far along and all of a sudden you look around you and you see all the problems. And you say, I'd keep living for God, but boy, it's just too much trouble. I'm going to get overwhelmed. Don't believe it for a moment. People who believe that died never experiencing the fullness of what God wanted to give them. Faith begins and it continues till you die. That's the faith that changes your life. And so what God is doing today is the same thing He did in this story. I want to be your God. I want to take your life and guide you in the choices you make. I want to provide your needs. I want to protect you from your enemies. I want to make your life really special. Do you trust me? His big grand plan has a place in it for you. But you cannot participate unless you trust Him. And when you trust Him, you do what He tells you. Would you bow your heads please for a moment? So what have you been feeling today? Have you had the thought come to your mind, boy, this is what I need in my life? Then all of a sudden you had another thought come to you, no, that's not going to work. What you're experiencing in your mind is a dialogue between God and the devil. They're talking to you about this. But your life is hanging in the balance. Trust God. God tells you to trust your life to Him. Believe it. Every obstacle that comes to your mind about why you shouldn't or can't, you push it aside and say I trust you. If you started out in this journey with God a long time ago but you sort of stayed on the side, you grumbled and complained about one thing or another and you're not listening to Him, you're not reading the Bible, you're not praying, you're not faithful in service to Him, you're not having a very good life, I'll just tell you that right off. That can change. Like each one of these stories about the people of Israel, when they came back and said Lord forgive us, we're going to trust you, they got to start over. You can too. Today admit to God that you haven't trusted Him. You haven't believed Him enough to do the things you know you ought to do. And the Lord will forgive you and start you on your journey again. The pianist is going to play a song. I want you to reflect on what God has said. Kathy is going to be here at the front, I'll be here at the front. If you have a promise you want to make to God, come and share that with us and we'll pray for you. If you think this is a time God's asked you to come and become a follower of His and commit yourself to Him, come and we'll pray with you and show you what to do next. If God has brought you to this community and you feel like this is a church that He wants you to be a part of, come and say God has directed me here. This is a time God talks to you. What you do will show your trust in Him.