Sermon Tone Analysis

Numbers 14:26-38

The Gravest Threat to the Church

 

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron: “How long will this wicked community grumble against me?

I have heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites.

So tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you the very things I heard you say: In this desert your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me.

Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

As for your children that you said would be taken as plunder, I will bring them in to enjoy the land you have rejected.

But you—your bodies will fall in this desert.

Your children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the desert.

For forty years—one year for each of the forty days you explored the land—you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.’

I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this whole wicked community, which has banded together against me.

They will meet their end in this desert; here they will die.”

So the men Moses had sent to explore the land, who returned and made the whole community grumble against him by spreading a bad report about it—these men responsible for spreading the bad report about the land were struck down and died of a plague before the LORD.

Of the men who went to explore the land, only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh survived.

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hat would you identify as the gravest threat to the continued existence of this church?

Perhaps you are tempted to think that an absence of money threatens the church.

If only we had more money, we could do so much more.

However, we hear the Risen Son of God speak to this issue when He addressed the Church of Smyrna.

/I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich/ [*Revelation 2:9*]!

Perhaps it is tyrants, whether pastors or boards, which in arrogance run roughshod over the people of God which threatens the congregation?

I will agree that there is no place for tyrants in the church, but not even tyrants are the gravest threat to the health of the church.

Upon reading the account of God’s judgement of the Hebrew people as they journeyed through the desert toward the Promised Land, I have come to the conclusion that the gravest threat to the church is that God will surrender us to our own desires.

There is no question but that when God wants to judge godless society, he gives them up to their own desires.

Listen to an extended passage which details this divine surrender of wicked people to their own desires.

/The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse/.

/For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles/.

/Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.

Amen/.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.

Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.

In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.

Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

/Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.

They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them/ [*Romans 1:18-32*].

Again, a searing example of the gravest threat to a people is summarised in the *Seventy-eighth Psalm*:

 

They wilfully put God to the test

by demanding the food they craved.

They spoke against God, saying,

“Can God spread a table in the desert?

When he struck the rock, water gushed out,

and streams flowed abundantly.

But can he also give us food?

Can he supply meat for his people?”

When the LORD heard them, he was very angry;

his fire broke out against Jacob,

and his wrath rose against Israel,

for they did not believe in God

or trust in his deliverance.

Yet he gave a command to the skies above

and opened the doors of the heavens;

he rained down manna for the people to eat,

he gave them the grain of heaven.

Men ate the bread of angels;

he sent them all the food they could eat.

He let loose the east wind from the heavens

and led forth the south wind by his power.

He rained meat down on them like dust,

flying birds like sand on the seashore.

He made them come down inside their camp,

all around their tents.

They ate till they had more than enough,

for he had given them what they craved.

But before they turned from the food they craved,

even while it was still in their mouths,

God’s anger rose against them;

he put to death the sturdiest among them,

cutting down the young men of Israel.

[*Psalm 78:18-31*]

 

Certainly, I could focus on either of the passages just cited to warn against the gravest threat facing us as a congregation.

However, I prefer to focus on an incident which occurred in the wilderness journeys to provide a warning against self-destruction.

The Living God is holy.

He will not submit to our foibles in the arena of the Faith.

When He has spoken, we are responsible to obey; we must not debate.

Review the incident with me and dig with me through the Word of God so that we may be warned.

You no doubt recall the story.

God, preparing the people to receive the land which He had promised His people, ordered that twelve spies be sent to explore the land.

Those spies, one from each tribe, travelled throughout the land for forty days.

At the end of that time they returned to the Israelites and delivered their reports.

“Ah,” they said, “it is indeed a rich land.

Here is evidence of the fruit.”

Had the majority only stopped there!

However, they continued with their report.

/But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large/ [*Numbers 13:28*].

The minority report was succinct and pointed.

/We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it/ [*Numbers 13:30*].

Even as Caleb and Joshua tried to encourage the people to obey God, Shammua, Shaphat, Igal, Palti, Gaddiel, Gaddi, Ammiel, Sethur, Nahbi and Geuel united to /spread /…/ a bad report about the land they had explored/ [*Numbers 13:**32*].

They agreed that the land would devour the people.

/We saw the Nephilim/…  /We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them/ [*Numbers 13:33*].

Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb tried in vain to halt the rebellion.

They tried to remind the people of God’s promise to give them the land.

They referred to His might and strength.

However, the people would not listen.

As Joshua and Caleb pleaded with the people to believe God, the Lord appeared to Moses and His anger boiled.