The Pentateuch- Holy God, Holy People, Holy Calling Pentateuch Sermon Series Kenwood Baptist Church Pastor David Palmer November 22, 2020
TEXT: Number 9:15-23
Good morning beloved. We continue this morning in our study of the Pentateuch, God's great base story of the Scripture. We are reading the text this fall together with Bible Journey, and I still want to invite you to join us at this stage in the journey. This Sunday and next, we will finish our study of the first of the Old Testament studies, on the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch means the five scrolls. We have covered the territory of Genesis, creation; Exodus, God's act of redemption, bringing us to the mountain of His presence. We paused there for a year, and we remained at the base of Mount Sinai as God spoke the Word to us of His will in Leviticus – “to be holy, for I am holy.” Now it is time to move. It's time to move in the book of Numbers.
We call this book Numbers because as you read the book of Numbers, there are a lot of numbers. This name comes from the Greek naming of the books of the Bible that is followed in many English versions. In Hebrew, this book of the Bible is called “In the Wilderness” because we leave the place of Mount Sinai and move through the wilderness before entering the Promised Land. You may feel like you're in a wilderness this year, and we need the book of Numbers to remind us that God is committed to leading us safely through the wilderness. It is critical for us in this portion of Scripture to recognize that God has to remain at the center of our lives. You will face pressure from the right and from the left, from the outside and the inside, to move away from having God at the center, and the book of Numbers will teach us to keep God central in our lives. We have to keep our eyes fixed upon Him. It is easy to get distracted by our own needs, simple needs, physical needs. It's easy to get distracted or overwhelmed by our emotional needs. It's easy to romanticize the past and think that the way things used to be were great, when in fact they weren't. We need God's presence to guide us, and He will guide us in His commitment to us as our heavenly Father, our Covenant King. It is critical for us, as the people of God, to follow Him wherever He goes. That's the first great
Page 1 of 13 lesson of our passage this morning. We’re going to look at Numbers 9 to see this orientation of the heart, and then we will illustrate how critical this is from a couple of further passages in the book of Numbers. So, keep your Bible open as we walk through the book of Numbers in its entirety this morning.
The book of Numbers begins with a description of the camp. It is not a chaotic camp. Whenever you go camping in the wilderness, it is always good to have a reliable guide. There are always those people in the group who really seem to know what they're doing, who actually know how to pitch the tent, and those are good people to identify. The camp is described in an organized way. This is important, and the first several chapters of Numbers describe the camp and the participation of everyone. Finally, when we reach Numbers 9, we have the description that were about to set out. The journey is about to begin, and as the journey begins, we discover in the text God's commitment to guide us. We read in Numbers 9:15: “On the day that the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony. And at evening it was over the tabernacle like the appearance of fire until morning.” Remember this is God's tent. It's also the tent of the testimony, which I love. You can call the tabernacle God's tent, but it's the tent of the testimony. At the center of God's tent, the absolute center of gravity for us as God's people, is the Ark of the Covenant. Inside the Ark are the tablets of the testimony of who God is, what He has done, and what He calls us to do. So, this is not just a tent for God to dwell in. It is also the state archive. It is also the place where we actually have the documents for what God calls us to do. The day the tent was set up, the cloud of God's presence hovered over the tent. Its appearance was like fire until the morning. It was God's personal presence. The cloud of fire and the cloud of His presence, we read in Numbers 9:16, was always there: “So it was always: the cloud covered it by day and the appearance of fire by night.” I am so encouraged in my own soul to tell you this morning from God's Word that Numbers 9:16 tells you that God is always there. If all we had was Numbers 9, if that was the only passage of Scripture that we had, we would know that God is always with us. He is always there. The cloud and the fire are not an apparition. They are not a special, magical sign. Remember that the cloud and fire are the personal presence of God, just as we all saw on at Mount Sinai that God's personal presence was there, and this personal presence means that God speaks to us. It is not only that we can see Him, but the living God is present and actually speaks and acts. This is the critical refrain in our text. We see that when God moves, we are to move. We see in Numbers 9:17: “And whenever the cloud lifted from over the tent, after that the people of Israel set out,
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and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the people of Israel camped.” The Hebrew says that the people pulled up. They pulled up their tent pegs, and they started journeying. When God stopped, they pitched camp.
So, the first lesson of this passage is that when God moves, you move. When God stays, you stay. That’s it, if we could just do that. And yet, we have to be reminded of that. We have to be told and shown how many forces there are around us that will try to move us away from that fundamental orientation of the heart. Can we do that? When God moves, we move. When He stays, when He stops, then we stop. The task of the Christian is not to define God's presence. It's to keep God at the center, so you pitch your tent around where He is and you follow Him. This is the Old Testament version of what Jesus says: “Follow Me.” You follow Him and you go where He goes. You stop were He stops. You do what He commands you to do. This is a formula that is repeated three different times in our text. The first is in Numbers 9:18: “At the command of the LORD the people of Israel set out, and at the command of the LORD they camped. As long as the cloud rested over the tabernacle, they remained in camp.” Not only can we see the Lord, but He speaks. We read in Numbers 9:20: “Sometimes the cloud was a few days over the tabernacle, and according to the command of the LORD they remained in camp; then according to the command of the LORD they set out.” The Christian life is lived as an extended version of this wilderness wandering, this journey through territory that God promises to bring us through. Sometimes the cloud remained just from evening until morning and then set out. Sometimes it was a day and a night, and then the cloud set out. Sometimes, as we see in Numbers 9:22: “Whether it was two days, or a month, or a longer time, that the cloud continued over the tabernacle, abiding there, the people of Israel remained in camp and did not set out, but when it lifted they set out.” We don't move forward unless we move in response to the Lord, and we do not stay where we are if God moves forward. At the command of the Lord, they camped; at the command of the Lord, they set out. In Numbers 9:23, we see the third repetition of this phrase:
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“At the command of the LORD they camped, and at the command of the LORD they set out. They kept the charge of the LORD, at the command of the LORD by Moses.” This is Hebrew idiom for emphasizing something. You know that when parents really want to communicate with their children, they repeat themselves. Repetition is powerful, so three times in this text we have this line: “At the command of the Lord, they set out. At the command of the Lord, they camped.” So, when God moves, we move; when God stays we stay. When God's stays, notice that we keep the charge of the Lord. It's not that we stay and are idle, just waiting for when God is going to move again, as though the whole experience is just about traveling. No, when God stays, we keep the charge or the ministry. When God stays, that means there's ministry for us to do in that location, and when God moves, that means He has something to teach us along the way and that there's ministry to do in that new situation. God's glory is visible, it is seen around the camp. We must follow the Lord wherever He goes. When He moves, we move; when He stays, we stay, and this is the key lesson of Numbers 9. It shows us that God is both transcendent and immanent. These are words that we all need. They are wonderful words.
A couple weeks ago we reveled in apodictic and casuistic law. These are important terms, but this morning we need God's transcendence. That means that God is glorious and high and exalted. He is separate from us. He is holy. He is big. He is powerful. God transcends my individual experience and yours. He is over all the nations. The nations of the world are like dust on the scales. That's God's transcendence, His power, and when we figure that we are in relationship to Someone that powerful, our hearts are strengthened and fortified and encouraged. But the God of the Bible is not just high and exalted, transcendent. He is immanent. That is, He dwells with us as His people. God's immanence means that His personal presence fills the sanctuary. He is there, always. His transcendence means that He knows the end from the beginning and all the stages along the way. That means when you set out together in the Lord's company and embark into a wilderness that is foreign and unfamiliar and filled with things that are scary and dangerous, you are in the hands of a powerful God who knows the way.
The wilderness, the desert, is a beautiful area, but it's an area that you can easily become lost in. It's an area that is punishingly hot during the day
Page 4 of 13 and can be freezing cold at night. It's an area where there are spectacular colors. When the sun comes up in the wilderness, it is spectacular. It's hard to believe, but one of the best runs I had this year was along the Dead Sea in January. When you go up high, there is less oxygen in the air, but when you go low, there's more. So, we were running along the Dead Sea in January, and I felt like an Olympic athlete. I felt like it was hardly work. There was so much extra oxygen around. I set out in the morning when it was dark, and I got to watch the sunrise in the desert. It was spectacular. This scene, though, this rugged terrain, will expose our fears and our weaknesses.
When we set out in Numbers 10, it was in the second year, the second month, the twentieth day of the month. That means we have been at Mount Sinai for a year. We set out in an organized way to the wilderness of Paran. The wilderness of Paran is the area halfway between Mount Sinai and the land of our promised inheritance. The Sinai Peninsula is like a large triangle. We come out of Egypt and come down to the tip of that triangle at Mount Sinai, and now we set out in a northeasterly direction to the wilderness of Paran, the desert of Paran. God is with us, and we're going in an organized way moving towards the Promised Land. Our hearts are prepared to turn the page of the next chapter and think: “There must be a new set of praise songs happening. There must be a time of celebration and joy.”
We are moving towards the fulfillment of God's promises, and we turn the page, or we scroll up, or we push the arrow button in Bible Gateway to go to the next chapter, and it’s astonishing, because Numbers 11:1 says: “And the people complained in the hearing of the LORD about their misfortunes, and when the LORD heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them and consumed some outlying parts of the camp.” This is a massive disjunction, and for the Hebrew lovers among us, let me just tell you that it's a hithpael participle. If you don't know that means, it's okay. If you do know that means, you're feeling the gravity of it. It means that they were not doing it just once. It means that they were complaining regularly. The first test, if you will, in the wilderness is to discover like children on a long road trip who start pleading from the backseat: “I'm hungry!” Every complaint is an indictment about the parents’ plan. Let's be honest, every one of those complaints is really an indictment about the parents’ ability to successfully complete this journey. It's an indictment
Page 5 of 13 about the parents’ plan. The people were complaining, and they were complaining about not having enough to drink. They were complaining about not having enough to eat, and we read in Numbers 11:4: “Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, ‘Oh that we had meat to eat!’” They had a strong craving, and when we go into the wilderness, we can be led astray by our own desires, physical desires – cravings for food, cravings for comfort – and this is dangerous. You should not live your life trying to meet your cravings. We live in a culture that's cultivating your cravings and often promising to meet them, and God's Word is warning you, and warning me, that the cravings we have will lead us away from God at the center. This is what happens, and the craving rises to a fever pitch, and the Lord responds in Numbers 11:31: “Then a wind from the LORD sprang up, and it brought quail from the sea and let them fall beside the camp, about a day's journey on this side and a day's journey on the other side, around the camp, and about two cubits above the ground.” Quail migrate in huge numbers across the Sinai Peninsula. They move north in the spring, and that's the time that we are in at this point. So, these huge flocks of quail are migrating north- east, propelled by winds from the Red Sea. They cross the Sinai, propelled by the wind, and they are usually exhausted as they migrate north. Sometimes they just hover a couple feet off the ground, or they rest and they’re really easy to pick up. In the fall, they come the other direction, southwest, and move to Egypt for the winter. In Numbers 11:32, we read: “And the people rose all that day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail. Those who gathered least gathered ten homers. And they spread them out for themselves all around the camp.” A homer is a biblical measure of size and volume. A homer is 220 liters, or 58 gallons. That means the person who gathered the least filled 18 garbage cans full of quail. This is not: “Oh, I'm a little hungry, and I need a four-piece chicken nugget to keep going on the journey.” This is complaining and grumbling to such a degree that you want to take over the trip because of your desire, and God says: “Okay, how about 18 garbage cans full of chicken nuggets for each of you.” Then we read in Numbers 11:33: “While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck down the people with a very
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great plague.” This shows us the gravity of their sin. The name the place in Numbers 11:34 was Kibroth-hattaavah, which means graves of craving. In other words, they marked that spot on the journey and said: “This spot on the journey caused us to die because we moved God away from the center and we’re living out of our own desires.” Beware!
We continue deeper into the wilderness. We test God when we question what He's asking us to do. In Numbers 13, the Lord tells Moses to send out people to spy out the land. He takes a representative from each of the Sea of Galilee tribes, and they go out. They leave the wilderness of Zin, and they travel up to scout out the land. This satellite image gives us a sense of what they were Dead Sea walking into to see. They were leaving the area of the wilderness, the southern part of the wilderness, which is very barren. They were an area of the wilderness that transitions into a very fertile area. You can see the difference is very stark. The area in the bottom of this image with the Dead Sea on the right is the wilderness, and the transition from the wilderness to the land that God has promised to give us is a transition from a barren area to a lush and fertile area. They move up, and they scout out the land. They go all the way north. You can see the Sea of Galilee in the northern part of this image, and you can see, even from outer space, how green and lush this area is. Everywhere around it is not green and lush, so they go up, they see the land, and they come to the Valley of Eshcol, which in Hebrew means cluster.
They gather a cluster of grapes and pomegranates and figs and see astonishing and rich fruit in the land. They spy out the land for forty days and return. They come back to the people and say in Numbers 13:27: “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.” This is not an idea.
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This is fruit that you can see and eat. It's real, and they show it to the people.
But some of the party say in Numbers 13:28: “However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.” Most of the ones who spy out the land were overwhelmed by what God was commanding them to do. We move beyond our own physical cravings to really questioning if we are able to do what God has called us to do. That's what's happening. Is God really among us? The people say we can't do that. The people in the land are stronger than we are. They are weeping and crying and grumbling, and they are even coming up with a plan to say we should just go back to Egypt, this is too much. But two men, Joshua and Caleb, say the land is a good land and the Lord is with us. The Lord commends Joshua and Caleb because they have a different spirit: “They have followed Me fully.” When God remains at the center of your life, you are willing to follow Him. You are satisfied, not led astray by your own desires. You see what He is calling you to do, and you say: “I can do it because He is with me, not because of who I am.” “We can do it,” they say, but the vast majority of the people were fearful, and they refused to follow the Lord. So, God speaks a word of judgment. It's a devastating judgment. There were ten plagues in Egypt and ten rounds of grumbling and complaining here, and at the tenth round, God says in Numbers 14:34 that they were unwilling to keep Him at the center, therefore: “According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know My displeasure.” Brothers and sisters, it's really a life-and-death decision to follow the Lord.
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The Lord told Moses to tell the people they have to turn around now, and they start this wandering. The people mourned greatly, and the next day, they seem to regret their decision to reject what God was offering and calling them to do. They said: “Okay, now we’re ready. We’re going to go up and we’re going to defeat the people of the people in the land.” But, Moses says in Numbers 14:42: “Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, lest you be struck down before your enemies.” They went up anyway, and they were decimated. They call that place Hormah, which in Hebrew means destruction. Graves of craving is one stop, and this is the place of destruction – when we went ahead, when we moved when God didn't, and we were unwilling to move, when He did.
A third powerful lesson in the wilderness takes place in Numbers 16, and I have to summarize this briefly. It's an overt rebellion. It is when the people get antsy. They get frustrated and they want a new leader. In Numbers 16:1-2, we read: “Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men.” They lead a mutiny against Moses. They assemble themselves, saying that Moses has exalted himself. When Moses heard it, in Numbers 16:4, we read that he fell on his face. Korah and his company try to stage a coup in the wilderness and offer to bring the people back to Egypt, back to slavery. Moses gathers the people and says in Numbers 16:5: “In the morning the LORD will show who is His, and who is holy, and will bring him near to Him. The one whom He chooses He will bring near to Him.” “We’re going to offer incense in a public way. Truth is in a public space, and we’re going to see who is from the Lord.” He goes on to say in Numbers 16:29-30: “If these men die as all men die, or if they are visited by the fate of all mankind, then the LORD has not sent me. But if the LORD creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the LORD.” It's a terrifying scene. Can you imagine? It’s like this: We’re coming to church on Sunday, and we have two people preaching. One says: “This pastor is illegitimate; come and follow me,” and the other pastor is falling on his face and saying: “Oh Lord, vindicate Your mission in the world, and if at the end of the sermon this one just walks away, then You haven't sent me. But if You
Page 9 of 13 do something extraordinary, that's like the judgment is compressed.” They finish the sermon, and the ground opens up and swallows him. Do you think there were more people in church the next Sunday or fewer? What do you think? I bet the church was packed, but not because it seemed like a neat show at that church – that when someone comes up and says things that are false, the ground opens up and swallows them. But it would be packed because there was a holy awe that came over the people as they recognized that God was among them. There were no phonies, no pretenders.
Brothers and sisters, we have no choice but to go through the wilderness, and the book of Numbers is a parallel for the Christian life. What a joy it was this morning to celebrate Sarah's baptism and mark that time of public confession. My eyes filled with tears to hear her articulate her faith and confidence in Christ. Hallelujah! There is going to be an interval between now and that moment when we step in through the gates of the New Jerusalem, and that interval is wilderness time. The book of Numbers is critical for the Christian life, and we are warned against following our desires. What an unreliable guide. We are warned against refusing to move forward when God does and presuming to move forward when He hasn't. We are warned against our love affair with rebellion, and we need to be weaned of all of these things in order to keep God at the center. Do we keep God at the center? If we can keep God at the center, then we will make it safely through. Let me apply this to us in three ways.
Number one: Never lose sight of Jesus Christ. You are going to get pressure from all directions. Some of it will be subtle. Sometimes it will be in your face. It will clamor for your attention – things of no consequence and things of sinister consequence will clamor for your attention. You’ll get pressure the right and from the left, on the outside from the inside, to look everywhere else but to Jesus. One of the truest things I know from being a Christian for many years, and from knowing many other Christians for many years, is that our central task is to keep our eyes on Jesus. You have to work at it because Jesus is on the move. Jesus is not an artifact. You can't keep your eyes on Jesus by going to a museum. Jesus is moving, and so you have to move with Him and stay when He stays. Don't rush ahead of Him, and do not lag behind. Trust His direction, and never lose sight of Him.
Number two: Complaining is catastrophic. Complaining is not a light thing. Complaining about our needs not being met, or complaining about how we would do it differently if we were in charge, or complaining by saying: “I know a better way to go,” or complaining about who's been appointed as a leader, all these things are dangerous because a complaint is an indictment of God's sovereignty. Let's be honest. When we complain, when I complain, I'm really setting myself up as a judge saying: “I know better, I know differently.” It's really an indictment of God's ability to lead and guide. If you need a concrete reminder of the danger of complaining,
Page 10 of 13 just remember the eighteen garbage cans full of chicken nuggets or remember the place of destruction. Complaining is catastrophic, Ten plagues lead to deliverance; ten complaints lead to disaster. So, when you hear people around you complaining, just know that that puts us all in danger. Say: “Brother, sister, we have to keep our eyes on Jesus. He is immanent. He is with us. He is transcendent, and He knows the way, and we trust Him.” This is an intense time in our national history. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus. We need to be careful about indicting His sovereignty.
Number three: Record the journey so that you don't forget. I think one of the best things that we can do – and I see some of you doing it even right now – is to keep a journal. The power of a journal is that you don’t need to trust your ability to remember what happened. Writing something down makes your thoughts clearer, and it also helps you to remember. What we discover at the end of the book of Numbers is that Moses has kept a journal. I just love what we discover at the end of the book of Numbers. It's one of those rare moments when you read the Bible and you read in the Bible how the Bible came to be. There are a few of them, and Numbers 33 is a critical one. In Numbers 33:1, we read: “These are the stages of the people of Israel, when they went out of the land of Egypt by their companies under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.” Numbers 33:2 is a tremendous verse about the Bible: “Moses wrote down their starting places, stage by stage, by command of the LORD, and these are their stages according to their starting places.” He kept a journal. He wrote it down, and when you write it down, you don't forget. The year 2020 was a year that we should record what we’ve learned. God has had much to teach us. You may not be super long-winded, and you might not be one that writes page after page after page, but I would encourage you to get into the habit of journaling a few sentences a day. Maybe you summarize the week, but I'd encourage you to do it by the day. What's God teaching you? What is your prayer? How have you seen Him working? Jot that down, and then, as the days flow forward, you can add how those prayers have been answered. You can then look back at a series of months or years and you see that God can be trusted. You have the record. Numbers 33 is deceptive in its significance. You might be tempted to just gloss over this chapter because it's just a list of places. It's an itinerary of the whole trip. Look carefully at Numbers 33:3: “They set out from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month. On the day after the Passover, the people of Israel went out triumphantly in the sight of all the Egyptians That's entry number one. The journal continues to the setting out to Succoth and Etham to
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Pi-hahiroth, and that's the moment when God instructed us to turn back and get pinned in at the sea. Moses notes in Numbers 33:8-10: “And they set out from before Hahiroth and passed through the midst of the sea into the wilderness, and they went a three days' journey in the wilderness of Etham and camped at Marah. And they set out from Marah and came to Elim; at Elim there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there. And they set out from Elim and camped by the Red Sea.” We camped in the wilderness, and he notes the stages along the journey until Numbers 33:15 where we come to the place of Mount Sinai and stay there for a year. God speaks and reveals Himself. There is that devastating location in Numbers 33:17: “And they set out from the wilderness of Sinai and camped at Kibroth-hattaavah.” This is the place of the graves of our desiring. The journey continues to Kadesh, where the spies were sent out, and finally the wandering through the wilderness ends at the end of the book of Numbers. I actually don’t like to call it the wandering because it's a purposeful route.
When the itinerary ends, it brings us to the place just opposite the Jordan at Jericho, in the plains of Moab, near Mount Nebo. We have been brought from the wilderness of Sinai through Paran, the wilderness of Zin, up around the other side, and when we turn next week to the book of Deuteronomy, we will have a set of sermons given to us by Moses looking over the land. The wilderness is critical. Never take your eyes off Jesus Christ. When He moves, you move; when He stays, you stay. As we journey together, let's remember that complaining is catastrophic, and let's remember God's faithfulness along the journey. We trust Him, the God who is both transcendent, high and lifted up, powerful, knows the end from the beginning and how to get us there, and we also know a God who is immanent and speaking to us.
Lord Jesus, we extol You. We praise You. We thank You for Your commitment to lead us through the wilderness, We thank You that You have revealed Your will that none should perish. We ask, Lord, for Your mercy and for Your healing. We pray for Your protection on our family here. We pray for those particularly who are working in hospitals and in our schools. We pray, Lord, for wisdom. We pray, Lord, that You give us courage and patience. Lord, we ask Your forgiveness for the places where we've complained along the way. I want to confess our trust in You, that You will lead us safely through. So, Lord, we count on You to meet our needs, and we pray against loneliness in the next few weeks. We pray against depression in the next few weeks. We pray against recklessness in the next few weeks and a cavalier attitude that would that would risk the lives of people that we love. We pray for restraint and that we keep our desires in check. We pray that you would meet our needs, Lord, in the next few weeks and that You would protect us as You did earlier this year. As you provided for us individually and as a
Page 12 of 13 church, we ask You to do that again, Lord. We love You. We pray for healing right now and strength for those in our church family who’ve tested positive, even this week. We ask for Your mercy, Lord, and for You to triumph and bring us safely through. Help us to remember Your faithfulness to us this year. In Jesus’ powerful Name, Amen.
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