Heading Back to Egypt - Numbers 14

Cody Hale

The Big Story • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

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Introduction

There’s a question that I think is really important for every southerner to answer: Is our faith because of our culture or because we are convinced that Jesus is Lord? That is, is your belief in Jesus the result of convenience or conviction? Here’s what I mean: it’s entirely possible for us to have a form of the Christian faith because it makes us more acceptable to our families and more profitable in our businesses and more normal in our environment. It’s can be socially beneficial for us to casually believe in Jesus, and so, we do so out of a family and cultural expectation, as the result of a guilt-induced habit or a need to be accepted or a desire to keep the peace, and not the result of a passion for Jesus and fire in our bones.

Recently, Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research partnered to do a study on American Christianity, and what they found was that many people were holding on to our Christian heritage, but not to actual Christianity. To accomplish this we’ve slowly begun to redefine what it means to be a Christian and follow Jesus so that it can now accommodate our convenient, cultural faith without proving an imposition to our worldly, materialistic, enlightened lifestyles. For example, around 65 percent of Americans describe themselves as Christian and in the South that number climbs to 85 percent. But, what they found was that 52 percent of Americans believe that Jesus was a good Christian, but not God. In fact, only 27 percent strongly disagreed that Jesus wasn’t God. Further, when they limited that question to only those who would describe themselves as evangelical Christians, 30 percent of them agreed that Jesus wasn’t God. Think about that. People who describe themselves as Christians are denying the single most foundational principle Christianity. Now, why would they do that? It’s because we want to have a version of Jesus that gives us what we need from him without costing us anything to follow him. It’s because we want a faith of convenience rather than a faith of conviction. We want a faith custom built for our benefit, which doesn’t actually require any faith at all.

God’s Word

So, that brings us back to our question: Is our faith because of where we live and what we want, or is our faith because of who Jesus is? Further than that, how do we know what we have? How can we know if we have a faith of convenience or a faith of conviction? (headline) That’s what I want us to look at the next two weeks as we come to our text to see the response of Israel to the report of the spies. We’ll look how we can know if we have a faith of convenience this week and of conviction next week. You’ll remember that’s where we left it last week. The spies had went into the promised land, and ten out of twelve of them said the same thing: The land is wonderful, but the people are giants. It would be awesome, but it’ll never be ours. God has brought us all this way for nothing. God sent the spies in as a test of their faith, and it becomes clear that they just flat-out don’t trust God. No sooner did God provide than they began to doubt his provision again. No sooner did God deliver them than they assumed they were hopeless again. That is, it becomes clear that the faith of the ten spies was one of convenience and not conviction. They wanted a God who made them feel better but cost them nothing. But, there were two spies who separated themselves from the other ten. Their position was that if God said then they trusted it. So, who would Israel trust? Who would Israel follow? It’s in the answer that we are able to see the difference between a convenient faith and a convictional one.

A convenient faith prioritizes the “majority opinion” over God’s word.

v. 1 “Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night.” First, you’ll notice that a convenient faith prioritizes the “majority opinion” over God’s word. The choice before Israel was whether they received the spies report as good news or bad news. The report contained both. On one hand, God had said that He was giving them the land and the spies said that the land was better than they could have ever imagined. On the other hand, there were giants with their giant armies and their giant swords standing in the way; giants that had left ten of the spies trembling in their togas. So, the difference between good news and bad news was the difference between trust in God’s word or confidence in the majority opinion of the spies. It was the difference between what God had said and what most of the men had said. And so, they wept all night long. They wept tears of unbelief. The spies had seen with their own eyes that God had betrayed them.

Nothing reveals a nominal faith like negativity. A convenient faith cannot withstand the temptation to join in the pessimism of the majority report. You see, despair thrives only when faith ceases. So, let me ask you this morning: When you look at the state of our society and the difficulties in your marriage and the discouragements with your job and the seemingly pointlessness of your life, do you trust what your friends say or what God has promised? Are you looking to a mistress or Facebook likes or for fresh gossip for a convenient way to feel better, or is God’s promise to you to never leave or forsake you as a hopeful candle in a world of darkness? What do you prioritize? A convenient faith prioritizes the majority opinion over God’s word.

The Easy Path to Destruction

It’s hard to not think of Matthew 7:13 when you realize that Israel is going to accept the majority report of the spies. “For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.” They’ve chosen the easy path, the convenient path. They’ve chosen the path of popular opinion. They’ve chosen the path that maintains social acceptance no matter what God has commanded. As Jesus shows in Matthew 7, it’s a path that can include forms of godliness, forms of Christianity that are lesser versions than the truth. It’s a form of the Christian faith that requires no actual faith. When it suits you to be a Christian, you are a Christian. When it suits you to be worldly, you are worldly. That’s what makes ‘the way easy.’ Every time your faith might require you to do something hard, every time your faith might call you to face down giant armies with your only hope being God’s deliverance, you find a common sense, justifiable reason why you can’t and shouldn’t and won’t. And, it’s the path of the majority. “Those who enter by it are many.” Friends, if you look up and examine your life only to realize that you talk like most people that you know and live like most people that you know and treat Jesus like most people that you know, if you wake up to realize that you’re following the majority opinion, then it’s important for you to realize that the majority is on a wide, easy path of least resistance that leads to destruction. Trust what God has promised over what your friends have said. Obey Jesus not matter the costs, and you’ll find that, in the end, the costs of going the other way are much higher.

A convenient faith measures God’s goodness with “Egypt’s ruler”.

v. 4 “And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” Next, you’ll see that a convenient faith measures God’s goodness with “Egypt’s ruler”. You can imagine as they spend the night weeping how their conversations began to happen. “You know, at least in Egypt we knew where our meals were coming from. At least in Egypt we knew that our children would grow up. At least in Egypt we knew where we’d sleep at night. Surely, it would’ve been more peaceful to die as a slave in Egypt than at the hands of giants with swords.” You’ll notice how many times Egypt comes up in their conversation. God had taken them out of Egypt, but Egypt was still in their hearts. And so, continually, they are measuring everything by what they had in Egypt. It’s like they have a little Egypt ruler the can pull out of their pocket by which they could measure everything by, as though Egypt was the standard. They were measuring the goodness of God by their momentary prosperity. And so, they turn back, essentially telling God that He could have his covenant and his promises and his paradise. They’ll take Egypt. They’d rather have an Egypt they could see, broken as it was, than the promise of a Kingdom they couldn’t see, perfect as it was. It’s breathtaking. Here are God’s people willfully abandoning the covenant that God had made with them, a rejection of his protection and provision and promises.

An American Ruler

We have a tendency to measure God’s goodness the same way. We’re inclined to pull out our little American rulers to measure whether or not God has been good to us. There’s nothing more miserable than following after God when you’re thirsty for Egpyt, when you’re thirst for the world. I wonder: When the world looks enticing, do you want to give your faith back? That is, when your faith becomes inconvenient to your desires, do you want to turn back to your old ways of living? When a guy notices you at the gym and your starved for attention, are you ready to turn back to Egypt? When God calls for you to give and go and you want to keep and indulge, are you ready to turn back to Egypt? Have you decided in your heart that America, that right now, is better than God is? It should serve as a warning: God gives them exactly what they asked for — they die in the wilderness.

Satan’s Poison is Often Delicious

That’s the fate of a convenient faith: death by the delicious poison of the world. You see, most people prefer an America they can see, broken as it is, than the promise of a Kingdom they can’t see, perfect as it is. You see, our enemy attacks us most often, not with hideous demons and egregious lapses of immorality, but in the form of something beautiful, like David sitting on the rooftop watching Bathsheba bathe. Satan’s poison is not often bitter; rather, it’s sweet and delicious. It’s tangible, something we can have in the here and now. It’s like when he offered Jesus in the wilderness the whole earth without the cross. It’s like when he offered Judas 30 pieces of silver. It’s like when he offers us Hollywood romance without the commitment or the enticement of a new purchase if we work a little longer or living for your leisure above any sacrifice. It’s seeing all of the lush prosperity around us, and doing whatever it takes to attain it. But, what we must be wary of is that to chase after the world we have to abandon the Lord. You can live for God and Egypt at the same time. And, if we abandon God for this world, He might just give us what we’re asking for, and we may die in this American wilderness. How are you measuring the goodness of God — by your prosperity or by his promises?

A convenient faith camouflages disobedience as “concern” for the “family”.

v. 3 “Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” Lastly, you’ll see a convenient faith camouflages disobedience as “concern” for the “family”. Now, see if this logic sounds familiar to you: “Well, obviously, we can’t be that radical for the Lord because we have our families to think of. We can’t just go charging into a land of giants as untrained slaves because we think God told us to. Whose going to teach junior how to throw a curveball?” Y’all, this isn’t new. Abandoning the call of God in the name of the family isn’t new. It’s what seems to us a noble excuse to ignore God’s word. They might as well say, “Church and faith are important, but if you focus on them too much, our children will fall behind.” Spending more time, energy, and money on lessons, tutors, and scholarship pursuits than you do on the development of your child’s faith is just a 21st century way of saying that our children would be better off in Egypt than abiding by God’s will.

Noble Disobedience

You see, our families provide us with our most noble excuse to pursue Egypt. They transform our materialism and self-promotion and self-indulgence into nobility. But, noble disobedience is a category only in the mind of a wretched sinner. More truly, our families are camouflage for our unbelief. We can hide behind them to do what we want to do. For this reason, it’s time we recognize: Our children aren’t abandoning the faith; they’re just inheriting our unbelief. They have the same lack of faith we have. They just don’t feel the same need to pretend. We’ve had more faith in ourselves to provide for and protect our families than we’ve trusted God, and, now, they’re paying the price. Look at verse 33. “And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.” You see, the children suffer for the unfaithfulness of their parents. They have to be raised in the wilderness rather than the Promised Land. But, God proves He can be trusted with the children for they are the ones He’ll use to accomplish his promise. God is telling them, and He’s telling us: “Your kids will suffer at your hands, and be blessed by mine.”

God is More Trustworthy than You

God is more trustworthy with your family than you are. Notice in verse 12 what it says. This is parent/child language, isn’t it? God says that He should allow his children to reverse the covenant if that’s what they want. He should ‘disinherit’ them; He should cut them from his plans. Now, remember, they claim to want to go to back to Egypt to protect the children. They’re going to save them. They’re going to rescue them. Just like us. We don’t prioritize reading the Bible, praying together, worshiping together. We say that we’re Christians when it’s convenient, but we don’t actually follow through in obedience with our children. But, we ensure that they eat well and do their homework and make it to practice and to ACT prep classes. And, look, I’m not trying to beat you up, but my goodness this is here. When we divorce these things, good as they are from the faith, do you know what they are? They’re our attempts to save our children from the world. They’re our attempts to give them a successful life that will be easier and better. But, what if by trying to save our children we condemn them instead? What if by trying to give them the world we rob them of their eternity? He who has ears to hear, let him hear. “And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness”

More than a Watch

I was really close to my great-grandad growing up. He was my person. One day, shortly before he died while I was in college, he called me over to his house. Part of our bond was over story-telling. I loved to listen to stories, and he loved to tell them. He always told me stories from when he was in the war, and this day was no different. He told me about how he’d had the opportunity to go to Switzerland while he was overseas, and, he toured a watch factory while he was there. At the end of the tour, he said that he pointed to a watch that had just been made, buying it on the spot. Then, he pulled that watch out that day and gave it to me with my name engraved on the back. As often as I look at that watch, I think about him. I think about his courage in the war and the way that his voice lowered as he told a story and how he loved to laugh. That watch is my sole inheritance from him, but, you see, I inherited a lot more than that. The watch just represents it. Your children are going to inherit from you a lot more than the moth-eaten homes you leave behind. And, one of the things they’re most likely to inherit is your faith. Are you leaving them with a convenient faith or a convictional faith?

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