NUMBERS: A WARNING FOR WAR

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.” So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran, according to the command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the people of Israel.

A shoe salesman was sent to a remote part of the country. When he arrived, he was dismayed because everyone went around barefooted. So he wired the company, “No prospect for sales. People don’t wear shoes here.” Later another salesman went to the same territory. He too immediately sent word to the home office. But his telegram read, “Great potential! People don’t wear shoes here!”

Perspective is everything when you are experiencing the challenges of life. Joni Eareckson Tada

What is your perspective of life? Today’s text present two perspectives. Two ways to view life and two ways to live life. Do you live in the company of the ten or the two?

Numbers 13:1–3 ESV

In order fully to understand the previous commandment, we must look at it in connection with a passage in the Book of Deuteronomy, where Moses, in going over the facts of Israel's marvelous history in the wilderness, reminds them of the following important and interesting circumstance

Deuteronomy 1:19–22 ESV

“Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrifying wilderness that you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded us. And we came to Kadesh-barnea. And I said to you, ‘You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is giving us. See, the Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed.’ Then all of you came near me and said, ‘Let us send men before us, that they may explore the land for us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities into which we shall come.’

Now here we have the moral root of the fact stated in

Numbers 13:2 ESV

“Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.”

It is evident that the Lord gave the commandment concerning the spies because of the moral condition of the people. Had they been governed by simple faith, they would have acted on those soul-stirring words of Moses

Now here we have the moral root of the fact stated in . It is evident that the Lord gave the commandment concerning the spies because of the moral condition of the people. Had they been governed by simple faith, they would have acted on those soul-stirring words of Moses

Deuteronomy 8:7–9 ESV

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.

Should not the Lord’s testimony be sufficient and satisfactory? The Lord himself had spied out the land and told them all they needed to know. Could they not trust His report? Had the Sovereign God not selected this land and allotted it for the seed of Abraham, His friend? Did God not know all about the difficulties? Was He not able to conquer them? Why, then, did they send spies?

Brother and Sisters, these questions are a stress test for our heart’s this morning. They seek to reveal whether or not a dangerous condition exist, unbelief.

Today’s text is not written down for us to criticize the ways of Israel in the wilderness or to point out their error here, and failure there. Their story is an admonition to us this morning. It is a beacon, erected by a faithful Father, to warn us off from the dangerous shoals, quicksands, and rocks which lie along our course and threaten our safety. May we heed His warning and reap its reward for this is His design in penning such a record.

1 Corinthians 10:1–13 ESV

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. 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. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

THEY DOUBTED THE GOODNESS OF GOD

The suspicious of God’s goodness began with our first parents and continues until now, yet he has filled the world with abundance and multiplied His loving kindnesses to His creatures. He fulfilled the promise of His covenant by sending His only-begotten Son to die yet; we still question His goodness.

For what is “God” but “good” written in brief? Charles Spurgeon

Doubting the truthfulness of God is utterly unreasonable. If God possesses any falsehood, then He is by definition a false god.

Look back upon your own experience and find, if you can, a single instance in which God has been unfaithful to His promises. Do you believe anyone in the past or present, in heaven or in hell could produce a testimony against God faithfulness.

If we could find one instance where He broke His promise, we would be justified in our doubts. If we could uncover one authenticated case, fully established, in which God had acted contrary to His promise or failed to keep His word, then we could doubt. However, not one levied accusation has ever been proven.

When a man is suspected of untruthfulness, we usually connect to him some motive for it but what motive can be alleged of the Lord? He knows all things from the beginning and therefore makes promises based on His keeping of them. God is not obligated to make promises. God makes promises because it is His nature to prescribe and perform them.

God is immutable. Therefore, any word uttered by Him will stand fast.

An unchangeable being cannot be fickle.

Man can search with all his soul, mind, and strength but there does not exist one supposable reason why the Lord should not be faithful. How dare we, then, without the slightest cause, cast suspicion upon the truthfulness of the Most High?

Brothers and Sisters, unbelief of God’s word ought, therefore, to be impossible. It ought to be beyond the bounds of possibility that we, God’s own children, should doubt the truth of His promises! You could not make a true-hearted child suspect his father of falsehood. If he heard such an accusation brought against a loving and kind father, he would be irate. He would not want to hear disproving evidence; he would say, “It is impossible. I know my father. I know his character. I have seen him. I understand him. I cannot bear hearing him slandered and I do not need to hear him defended, for of this I am sure—that he cannot lie.”

INDIANA JONES PICTURES

Brothers and sisters, may it never be said that the children of God doubt their Father? I have heard some professing Christians say that they find it hard to believe His promises and yet they do not appear to be concerned about their condition. What must be their opinion of God if they find it hard to believe Him?

Think of it again—a child of God finding it hard to believe his own Father—his heavenly Father! If it has crossed your mind, scout it, and with many tears confess it before God, for to a child of God it ought to be impossible to doubt His Father’s truthfulness.

For many of us doubt should be impossible because of the many proofs that we received demonstrating the Lord’s faithfulness to His promises. He has answered the prayers of some of us in a way that has drowned our eyes with tears of joy. Most, if not all, have felt amazed at the mighty goodness of our God and this should make doubt impossible.

Let us resolve with the help of God’s grace to doubt the evidence of our eyes and not God. Let us remember that our eyes will deceive us, but God will not. Let us doubt our human intuition and inclinations but never doubt our God. Let us be suspicious of ourselves but never our God. Be suspicious of everything except God. Doubt your feelings they can seldom be relied upon. If all your friends and trusted confidants unanimously conclude that your case is hopeless and the promise cannot be fulfilled, reject and refuse their flesh and blood counsel. Let God be true and every man a liar and everything a liar.

If your hope is in God alone then you have all that you need. Every promise of God first comes from the Father’s lips it is then revealed by the Holy Spirit and finally it is sealed by the blood of Jesus. A single doubt of a promise of God casts a dishonor on the Trinity. It is a triple transgression.

Do you not find it strange how we can be so confident about so much and yet not exercise the same confidence towards our God? We all believe in gravity. Why? Because we have seen it in action so often, we expect to see it. Yet this certainty is not as certain as we might believe. This certainty has been suspended. Was it not at the Red Sea that water stood upright?

We wake each morning with certainty that our sun will rise at the appointed time. Why? Because we have seen it in action so often, we expect to see it. And yet there was a time when there was no sun to rise or set, and there will be a time when the sun shall be turned into darkness, and day and night shall cease. How can you trust the temporary and yet doubt the eternal?

May the Holy Spirit convince our hearts this morning God is more regular in keeping His promises than sun has been in its rising and setting. We need to be infused with doctrine of immutability so that we can doubt His goodness no longer.

THEY DOUBTED THE GREATNESS OF GOD

They doubted His power to give them water in the wilderness, but the struck rock poured forth a crystal stream. They questioned His power to feed them in the wilderness and even charged Him with murder, yet He opened Heaven and showered them with a feast of angels’ food.

Surely the food of angel’s would satisfy them and bring their murmuring to an end, but this was not the case. They demanded meat and a strong wind brought quail on which they fed till they were full. Surely these demonstrations of power would silence their murmurings and fears and provide them with confidence in their great Friend, but this was not so. Instead of living by faith, which pleases God

Hebrews 11:6 ESV

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

), they lived the next forty years provoking the Lord.

they lived the next forty years provoking the Lord.

Gigantic men and fortified cities are nothing to Him who divided the Red Sea.

When the Omnipotent is present, opposition vanishes.

We must labor to strip ourselves of all discouragements and murmurings. The difficulty that lies before you may appear great, but it cannot be greater than the Lord who has promised to make us more than conquers. Your circumstances may parade around your life taunting their perplexities, but they cannot perplex Him who has promised to guide you with His counsel. What I am speaking to you is not new and thus it reveals the true reason why we are so dismayed. We are not truly troubled by our difficulties or perplexities but by our suspicions of God.

Man can conjure up many arguments for unbelief in such situations. They could have said, “we fear because of our weakness. We are not a trained army. We are feeble men made feebler by all these women and children. We cannot drive out the hordes of Amalekites and Canaanites.

Whatever excuse we might conjure up the Lord has a comeback. What does your weakness have to do with My promise? How does your weakness affect My power to give you the land? Caleb had told them,

Numbers 14:8 ESV

If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey.

These, whom the Lord brought out Egypt with mighty demonstrations, knew that their feebleness was not a hindrance. There are those who resist the work of God through strength and others through weakness. Both groups rob God of His glory. Remember, The Lord had not chosen them because they were mighty but because they were weak. The Lord flexes His might through the faith of those who are fainthearted.

It is in moments like these we should apply that often misapplied verse when we are tempted to weakness as your reason for disobedience,

Philippians 4:13 ESV

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

And if that be not enough say with that great Apostle who faced constant temptations of weakness,

2 Corinthians 12:9–11 ESV

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. I have been a fool! You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing.

Let us dive down deep in the Mariana Trench of our doubts and fears and see them for what they are, mistrust of God. The question before us this morning is not, “How long will we be weak?” but, “How long will it be before we believe?”

Many today are like those in our story. They are not murmuring against the Lord but against Moses and Aaron. They are to spiritual to attribute any error or folly against the Lord.

How many times have we pointed out our fellow man frailty, his rashness, his lack of wisdom, and we say that we do not doubt God, but our leaders or our friends. If you put this excuse to the test, you will see that it falls woefully short. The Lord uses whom He pleases, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas. He can accomplish His purposes despite their frailty. His word is not to fall to the ground because of the channel through which He carries it into effect. Strip our distrust of the agents whom God employs of all the masks with which it seeks to disguise itself and it comes to this—we do not believe God.

Consider this truth this morning. When we murmur and complain were practice a form of atheism. When God pronounces a promise and we doubt its fulfillment for any cause whatever, we are acting as if there were no God. Are not the promises of Scripture the promises of God himself? Does God speak frivolously? Is His solemn promises like the false words of man? Are God’s promises like withered leaves which the passing wind bears into forgetfulness?

We know that God can and will keep His promises , but we doubt whether He will keep His word to us. Most of us can believe anything about God but that which is the most necessary for us to believe. We believe in the Scriptures except for those which we are called upon to believe. False faith will exert itself everywhere but where it is wanted!

How many times have we thought or said that if circumstance were different, we could believe God? Let me rephrase our doubt in the form of a statement. God, under my existing circumstances I do not believe you to be worthy of my confidence.

Let us be reminded this day that to doubt one promise of God is to doubt them all because they all hang together, and they are either all false or all of them are eternal truths.

Do you find it unbelievable that there is unbelief of God? He that left His fingerprints throughout our universe. He spoke to nothingness, and out came this world, shrouded in the swaddling bands of darkness. He spoke again and forth leaped the light, and all things were quickened into life and clothed with beauty. He has not hidden who he is, like eggs hidden at Easter, but has clearly displayed Himself in His creation and in His creature which was made after His image and likeness. He made our unbelief difficult to sustain when He did not remain distant but clothed Himself in flesh and condescended to men of such low estate. He did not sit in silence leaving man to grope in the dark but has spoken to us by His prophets and in these last days by His Son.

The Lord has created everything by His word. How can we ever imagine or conceive that His word can be a lie? The words of the Lord are the Lord in action making His will manifest. How can we conceive that He could lie under any conceivable circumstance?

Unbelief is unreasonable. If God has made a promise, on what grounds do we doubt its fulfillment?

Which attribute of God comes under the most suspicion? His power. Have not men said,

Psalm 78:19 ESV

They spoke against God, saying, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?

Let me answer these questions with questions. Has He not made the heavens and the earth? Do not all things subsist by His continuous power? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Is His arm shortened that He cannot save? Is His hand paralyzed that He cannot achieve His purpose?

Let us discard, this day, with great anger our folly of unbelief and may we refused to be entertained by it for another moment.

Everyone here today stands guilty of this sin and some are living constantly in its grip. Let us not trivialized our doubt as only a small matter of mistrust. This sin is exceedingly sinful because it discredits the Lord.

You may as well doubt Him about everything if you distrust Him upon any one matter. Let us not trivialized our doubt as only a small matter of mistrust. This sin is exceedingly sinful because it discredits the Lord.

We must denounce this sin because it insults God. We should have a hatred for unbelief because it misrepresents and blasphemes God. We should hate unbelief because it is the ruin of mankind. Why are men lost? All their sins which they have done cannot destroy them if they believe in Jesus, but the damning point is that they will not believe in Him. Scripture says

John 3:18 ESV

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

) “Whoever believes in him is not condemned” Why? “Because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned” Why? “Because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

God Himself hangs on a tree in human form bearing the sin of man, and yet men turn their backs on this tremendous display of love and refuse to believe it. Multitudes are at this moment in suffering torment because they would not believe in the testimony of God concerning His Son.” Is this not reason enough to hate unbelief?

We should hate unbelief because it brings much misery and weakness upon the children of God. If we believed God’s promises, we should no longer be bowed down with sorrow, for our sorrow would be turned into joy. We would glory in our infirmities and tribulation because we know the good result which the Lord brings forth from them. The man who steadily believes His God is calm, quiet, and strong.

We should hate unbelief because it has hampered the work of Christ in the world. The Christ that can save is a Christ believed in, but of a Christ who is not believed in it is written, “He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.”

Why do 2 billion people remain unreached? Could it be that the church lacks enough faith for the conquest. There is no restriction in God—our limit lies in our own fearful and unbelieving hearts.

If the Son of Man should now come on the earth, where would He find faith? Where would He discover a high degree of it? You know what most churches do—there is the regular performance of divine service, the regular preaching of an orthodox sermon as dry as it is orthodox, the regular meeting of a few people for a praying meeting, in which there is no real prayer, and the regular revolution of a spiritual barrel organ, from which all spirituality has long ago been ground out. Nothing comes of this lifeless routine and it was never likely that there could be anything, for out of death, death alone can come.

When we begin to preach in faith, believing that men must be saved by the Gospel, they will be saved by it. When we go forth to battle, confident that the weapon of the Gospel in the hand of God cannot fail, it will not fail. It is want of faith on our part which causes the eternal God to put His right hand into His bosom and keep it there. When once the Holy Spirit has wrought a mighty faith in us— and we shall never have it till He does—then will the Lord lay bare His arm and we shall see marvelous things. His own right hand and His holy arm will get Him the victory.

The world has never seen since apostolic times what yet shall happen in our own day if we will but believe. If we will but confide in God, our young men shall see visions, and our old men shall dream dreams, and then shall be poured out upon the Lord’s servants and handmaidens of His own Spirit and they shall prophesy. Then will the world wake up and cry, “The old fanaticism has come back. These men are drunk with new wine.” It will only be that they speak as the Spirit gives them utterance, for He works mightily where faith is mighty, and He is restrained because of this wretched, wicked, insulting, blasphemous unbelief of ours that will persist in suspecting the Lord.

Forward, brethren. God the Holy Ghost helping you, resolve in your hearts this day that all the boasted discoveries of science you will doubt, all the affirmations of the wise you will doubt, all the speculations of great thinkers you will doubt, all your own feelings and all the conclusions drawn from outward circumstances you will doubt, yea, and everything that seems to be demonstrable to a certainty you will doubt, but never, never, never, while eternity shall last, will you suffer the thought to pass your mind that God can ever in the least degree run back from anything that He has spoken or change the word that has gone forth of His lips.

Remember that our race, the human race, fell by believing the serpent’s charge that God was not trustworthy. We must rise up in the power of the Spirit and Scripture and put our flesh to death. Let us resist the lying serpent and remind him that his predestined meat is dirt.

Let us declare war on unbelief and put this disgraceful folly to death by believing in the absolute goodness and greatness of our God May we no longer be dismissive of our folly. May we take captive every thought that raises itself against the knowledge of God. Let us do this so that we might not bring shame to his name. Let us do this so that His name can be known throughout the earth. Let us cry out to our never changing God who is our present help in our time of need “I believe help my unbelief.”

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