THE
CHILDREN OF ISRAEL WERE CALLED OUT OF EGYPT FOR A PURPOSE; THEY WERE
SAVED FROM EGYPT TO GO
TO THE PROMISED LAND; THEY WERE SAVED FROM SLAVERY TO BE A PEOPLE FOR
GOD’S GLORY--- TO WORSHIP GOD AND BE A HOLY NATION THAT LED THE
WORLD TO GOD. Their immediate purpose was to go to the Promised Land
and seize the land. It should have taken no more than 40 days to get
there. Some say it could have taken as little as 11 days. It took
them 40 years because of
their rebellion and disbelief.
They could
have done it the easy way but they chose to do it the hard
way.
No actually, they chose to do it the hardest way.( I call
it “hardissimo”, a word I coined). Like them, we can
choose to do things the easy way or the hard way---or the
hardissimo way!. God WILL bring us to our “promised land”
and he will cause us to fulfill our purpose and be conformed to his
image. Will it take “40 days” or “40 years”? That’s up to each one
of us.
AND, HAVING
GOTTEN RIGHT UP TO THE PROMISED LAND, WILL WE ACTUALLY GO
IN AND POSSESS IT? THAT’S UP TO US. GOD IS WILLING AND GOD IS
ABLE. WE JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE, TRUST AND OBEY!
Joyce Meyer
has a saying “one more time around
the mountain”. Israel went around and around and around.
I don’t want to. I think I’ve already been around the
mountains too many times and I’m really tired of it. How many times
have you been around the mountain?
AND YOU KNOW
WHAT? GOD COULD HAVE EVEN LED THEM IN A DIFFERENT WAY---A SHORTER
WAY THAN THE 40 DAY TRIP.
John Piper
said “There
are shorter ways to get from Egypt to Palestine than through the
wilderness of Sinai. Mount Sinai is about 200 miles out of the
way—which is bad enough if you are driving a car, but if you are
walking and there is scarcely any water or shade, then the detour
really tests your patience. You would think that if God were your
travel agent, he would know the terrain and the shortest route to
Palestine. You would think that if he can divide the Red Sea, a
direct and painless route to the promised land would be a snap.
Surely he would have given the law at Kadesh Barnea, or Hebron, or
by the Jordan, or some place a little more on the way.
SO WHY DIDN’T GOD LEAD THEM THE SHORTER
WAY? I don’t know all the reasons why, but I do know that they had
trouble adjusting to their new status of free men even during the
period of 40 days. The shorter way would have been too soon to bring them into the
promised land. They still had that slave mentality; they still had
disbelief and rebellion in them. They still saw themselves as
victims not victors. These characteristics can never lead you into
the Promised Land so, though they were out of Egypt, they were not
in the Land of Promise.
THEY WERE RIGHT SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF A BIG
FAT, DRY, BARREN, LONELY, AND MISERABLE WILDERNESS!
They’d seen
God’s power IN Egypt, they’d seen His power at the Red Sea, and
they’d seen it since then—but they still doubted God.
Their 40 years in the wilderness started with ONE act of disbelief
and disobedience—a serious one. They refused to believe that God
could give them the promised land and they refused to obey His
command to go and take possession of it. After that, they tried to
change their minds but it was too late.
Part 2
IT STARTED
WITH A BAD BELIEF AND A BAD REPORT.
THE MAJORITY WERE WRONG—THE MINORITY WERE RIGHT. MAJORITY DOES NOT
NECESSARILY RULE AND IT IS NOT OFTEN RIGHT! REMEMBER, NOAH WAS A
MINORITY. YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MAJORITY!
HERE’S HOW IT HAPPENED. They actually got to the Promised Land. They
saw it, they could have gone in. God was ready and Moses was ready.
Numbers
13:17And Moses sent them to spy out the
land of Canaan, and said unto them, Get you up this way southward,
and go up into the mountain: 18And see the
land, what it is, and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they
be strong or weak, few or many;19And what the land is that they
dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that
they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strong holds; 20And
what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood
therein, or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of the
fruit of the land. Now the time was the time of the firstripe
grapes.
The Lord tells Moses to send some spies to
explore the land of Canaan, which the Lord was giving to Israel.
Moses sends one representative from each of the 12 tribes, including
Caleb (tribe of Judah) and Hoshea/Joshua (tribe of Ephraim). Moses
gives them explicit directives on what they are to find out: numbers
and strength of the current inhabitants, towns, fertility of the
soil, types of plants and produce. After 40 days, the spies return
to give their report.
26And
they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the
congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of
Paran, to Kadesh; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the
congregation, and shewed them the fruit of the land. 27And
they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest
us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit
of it. 28Nevertheless the people be strong
that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great:
and moreover we saw the children of Anak there. 29The
Amalekites dwell in the land of the south: and the Hittites, and the
Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains: and the
Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan.
THEY SAW THE SITUATION AND MADE IT EVEN WORSE
THAN IT REALLY WAS. But, their sin was not that; there sin was in
thinking and believing that God was not able to overcome the natural
with the supernatural; that God was not able to give them victory
and maybe not even willing. They
thought this of the Mighty and Loving God who had rescued them from
Egypt and destroyed Pharaoh’s army in front of their very eyes at
the Red Sea. Talk about hard hearts. Ten of the twelves spies
brought back an evil report. Two of them, Joshua and Caleb, saw the
exact same conditions, the same reality, but the report they gave
was based on the faith in the God of Israel—faith in His love and
His power and His good intentions toward them
JOSHUA AND CALEB URGED THE PEOPLE TO GO UP AND
POSSESS THE LAND AS GOD WANTED THEM TO DO.
30And
Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at
once, and possess it; for weare well able to overcome
it.
THEY SAID “WE ARE WELL ABLE”! BUT, KNOWING ALL
THEY KNEW AND HAVING SEEN ALL OF GOD’S MIRACLES ON THEIR BEHALF,
THEY STILL SAID “WE ARE NOT ABLE!”
31But
the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up
against the people; for they are stronger than we. 32And
they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched
unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have
gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof;
and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. 33And
there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants:
and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in
their sight.
WHAT DO YOU SAY WHEN YOU ARE FACED WITH
SEEMINGLY GRIM AND IMPOSSIBLE SITUATIONS? DO YOU SEE YOURSELVES AS
“GRASSHOPPERS” OR DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS VICTORS? DO YOU SEE THAT,
WITH GOD, YOU ARE WELL ABLE OR DO YOU SEE THAT YOU ARE NOT ABLE?
You
know, when we think we are not able to face situations, we’re
actually visualizing ourselves facing them “without God”. Do we
really want to think of ourselves that way?
Many of us face illness and disability that make
us lose hope. These conditions are a reality—yes—but God is a
greater reality. Others face lives in prison that seem hopeless
too. God is a greater reality than the darkest prison.
BECAUSE OF THE BAD REPORT THE 10 SPIES GAVE, THE
PEOPLE WERE DISMAYED AND LOST HEART.
Numbers 14: 1And all the
congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept
that night.
AND, when they lost heart, they started doing what they did
best: murmuring, complaining, and rebelling!
2And
all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron:
and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had
died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this
wilderness!
They went on
to rail against God and despise and discount everything God
had done for them.
3And
wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the
sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not
better for us to return into Egypt? 4And
they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us
return into Egypt.
Moses and
Aaron, who could have washed their hands of all responsibility for
them didn’t; they had the hearts of shepherds and fell on their
faces before God and interceded for them. But God had had
enough of this ungrateful generation.
26And
the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 27How
long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against
me? I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel, which
they murmur against me.
28Say unto
them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in
mine ears, so will I do to you:29Your
carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered
of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and
upward which have murmured against me.
30Doubtless ye
shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you
dwell therein, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son
of Nun.
31But
your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring
in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.32But as for you, your carcases,
they shall fall in this wilderness. 33And
your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear
your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness. 34After
the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty
days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty
years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.
35I
the LORD have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil
congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this
wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.36And the men, which Moses sent to search
the land, who returned, and made all the congregation to murmur
against him, by bringing up a slander upon the land, 37Even
those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land, died by
the plague before the LORD.
38But
Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of
the men that went to search the land, lived still.
And so, the
journey which was meant to take 40 days took 40 years—until every
single one of that generation (except for Joshua and Caleb) died in
the wilderness. Then, their
children whom they’d professed to be so worried about entered the
promised land—but that’s in a subsequent lesson. God could have
killed them off right then and there, but he didn’t because He had
mercy on their children who would inherit the Promise—the Gifts and
callings of God. They needed their parents to raise them and care
for them. So God just waited and Israel just wandered—‘round and
‘round the mountain till, one by one, the grumbling, griping,
moaning and groaning, whiney parents fell dead in the wilderness.
Till the old
is gone the new cannot be free. Please don’t take this as a message
to hasten your parents to their final rewards…lol.
WANT
TO QUOTE PAT ROBERTSON, WHO SAID:
God will often put us into the wilderness. He took the Israelites
for 40 years in the wilderness. It was not just a little bit. It was
40 years that he put them in the wilderness so that they might
learn, that they might learn to know Him. And that they might learn
that man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes
from the mouth of God. That they might learn to trust Him. That He
might see what was in their hearts, and that they might begin to
look inside and learn what was in there.
That
time in the wilderness is not necessarily bad for us. There are many
people who have been sort of put on the shelf and have said, What is
going on? I am a well-known singer, I could be a teacher. I'm a
pastor or I'm an executive or whatever I am, and all of a sudden I
am benched. I am traded to another club. I'm in a different league,
and I don't understand what is happening. What is happening is that
God Almighty loves you so much that He that knows you need a little
time in the desert.
We used to have a song -- Moose Smith was our bandleader in the old
days of The 700 Club when we had an orchestra. He had a song that he
wrote called Take Another Lap Around Mount Sinai Until You Learn
Your Lesson. It was a great song with Moose and the boys singing
Take Another Lap Around Mount Sinai.
The
Israelites could have gotten to the Promised Land in 11 days, but it
took them 40 years. They had to keep going around and around and
around Mount Sinai until they learned their lesson. That's what
happens to us.
After a
while we get deeper in the Lord, we learn more of Him, and suddenly
something better comes. We find in Proverbs that you, "Trust in the
Lord with all your heart and lean not onto your own understanding.
In all of your ways acknowledge Him." And the Bible says, when all
this is over, "He will direct your paths." And I think that is the
important thing to remember.
THE CALLING
AND PURPOSE OF GOD IS TO BRING US CLOSE TO HIM AND HAVE US BRING
OTHERS TO HIM. WE ARE ON A JOURNEY AND THAT JOURNEY WILL TAKE US
THROUGH SOME WILDERNESS. The Israelites spent 40 years in the
wilderness when it could have been 40 days.
So what about
you and me? Will it be 40 days or 40 years? Will we trust God and
believe in His power and His good intentions toward us? Or will we
believe the bad report? Will we even give a bad report to others?
WILL THERE BE
MORE TRIPS AROUND THE MOUNTAIN? WHAT IS THE PROMISED LAND? It is
not slavery or addiction or opression; it is freedom—freedom
to be who we were meant to be and freedom to be what we were called
to be. It is not the wilderness, not barrenness or unfruitfulness,
not a dry hungry existence, it’s a place of blessing and fruitful
endeavor—a place of fulfillment and purpose; the purpose we are
called to.
And we know
that all things work together to the good for those who love God and
are the called according to His purpose.
