Then all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. All the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness!... But all the congregation said to stone them with stones.  (Numbers 14:1-2,10).

Notice that the entire congregation of Israel en masse chose to rebel against the Lord. It was not just a few of them. It was not a minority group. It was not even a majority of them. It was all of them, such that the only exlusions were a statistically inconsequential few individuals, namely, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb. 

As the entire congregation (of adults) rejected God, so He also rejected them. Every one of them would die over the course of forty years in the desert.

Friends, as I meditate on this text today, I am reminded just how much our Christian faith is a minority faith. As Jesus said, 

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Matthew 7:13-14).

How few are a few? In normal parlance it is smaller than "some". Only eight were saved from God's first universal judgment on the earth, and seven of these likely found mercy only because of their association with the one man, Noah, who alone was found to be righteous before God. 

Although Israel left Egypt with multitudes, even 700,000 men, can you believe only two of these actually made it into the Promised Land, namely, Joshua and Caleb? The rest died in the desert because of their unbelief. 

When Jesus told His disciples a parable about a widow that cried out to a judge for justice, He taught them that God would certainly bring swift justice for His chosen ones. But then He added a somewhat disconcerting comment:

However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8).

In other words, when Jesus comes to judge the earth, would He find anyone to save? The suggestion is that He would be coming to judge the whole lot of them. It is almost as if to say, "Be careful what you ask for?!"

Friends, do you find yourself in the minority? Evangelical Christians are certainly a small minority even among those that claim the name of Christ. And among Evangelicals there may be an even smaller number of those that truly seek wholeheartedly to live what they believe. 

Why is it that every statistic suggests that Christians live no differently than non-Christians? Why is it that Christian churches thrive just like their non-Christian counterparts, not because of the Spirit but because of charismatic leaders with business acumen and members with deep pockets? Why has just about every church avoided church discipline like the plague, such that when it occurs, it is very rare and fraught wih all manner of fear of litigation? Why are Christian leaders so politically impotent, such that they are afraid to endorse Christian candidates, as well as speak out against abortion and the homosexual agenda? Why do Christian leaders feel they have to defend their "turf" more than pursue bibilical truth, to defend their "own" rather than uphold biblical integrity? Might this be some of the reasons Jesus said, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

The true Christian faith has become bastardized because it has become disconnected from Christ and His Word. It has become so much like the idolatrous culture, by which it thrives, that when the occasional conversions do happen, they are not so much to Christ and to His Word as they are to some form of cultural Christianity. 

Friends, this is again why I emphasize the importance of all of us studying the Word of God diligently for ourselves. How can you discern right from wrong and truth from error, even in what you are taught by your pastors and teachers, unless you are as much or more in the Word of God than they. The declaration of the Psalmist needs to be our declaration:

Oh, how I love your law!
    I meditate on it all day long.
Your commands are always with me
    and make me wiser than my enemies.
I have more insight than all my teachers,
    for I meditate on your statutes.
I have more understanding than the elders,
    for I obey your precepts (Psalm 119:97-100).

When we are so in the Word for ourselves, we can praise God and celebrate when we hear truth being proclaimed, and we can also correct and rebuke when it is not. Otherwise, we are all like sheep, hopefully not being led astray.

But Moses said, “Why then are you transgressing the commandment of the Lord, when it will not succeed? Do not go up, or you will be struck down before your enemies, for the Lord is not among you (Numbers 14:41-42).

Let's review the situation. With mighty signs and wonders God led them out of bondage to Egypt in order to bring them into the promised land of Canaan. This promise goes as far back as Abraham, over four hundred years ago (cf. Genesis 15). Now, God was about to fulfill this promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs of Israel. But there was one problem.

After the negative report by the majority of the spies sent into the land, the people could not envision how God could give them the land without them being trampled "like grasshoppers" by the giant Anakites. So, they grumbled against Moses and planned to return to Egypt. God overheard their thoughts and became angry with their stubborn unbelief. Therefore, He decided that these people would not inherit the Promised Land. Instead, only their children would enter the land, along with Caleb and Joshua, who were the only faithful adults among them. The rest would wander around for forty years until every adult twenty and over died in the desert. What is more God struck down the ten unfaithful spies with a plague. 

Now, the people did not like their prospect; therefore, they mourned deeply, confessed their sin, and decided that they would take the land that God had promised to give them. There was only one problem. God had already decreed that He would not give the land to them. His new command was for them to wander around the desert for forty years until all of the unbelieving adults from that generation died. Then, their children could go in and take the land. 

Thus, when the people tried to go in and take the land, they were beaten down. Why? God was not with them. Even though they thought they were "repenting" and obeying God by following His first command, they were, in fact, disobeying Him because they refused to heed His latest command, which was to not fight, turn back, and wander around the desert. 

I believe there is a lesson for us here today. 

I have argued elsewhere that in the progress of God's revelation, we are no longer under the Old Covenant Mosaic Law. Paul even writes that those that try to follow the Law put themselves under a curse because the Scripture says that cursed is everyone that does not perfectly follow the whole Law (cf. Galatians 3:10-12).

Yet, there are preachers and teachers today leading ignorant believers into the very thing Paul says not to do. When they come to an Old Testament text that gives a provision of the Law or a promise for obeying the Law, they try to directly apply it, as if these commands and promises were given just yesterday by God. They totally ignore the progress of revelation, seeking to claim the promises or apply the commands that have been superceded not only by new commands in the New Testament but by even a whole New Covenant, which was ratified by the precious blood of Christ (cf. Hebrews 8:6-13).

As you can see, Christians today are not much different than ancient Israel. We don't really want to listen to God. We would rather listen to our own interests, picking and choosing those Scriptures we like and simply ignoring those we don't. Ministers do this, for example, when they fail to preach that tithing is not a New Testament obligation. Average Christians do this when they gather around in Bible study groups, read any old passage in the Old Testament, and immediately begin trying to apply the things that are "meaningful to them," as if the Law is like a buffet line. 

Paul affirmed his ministry to the Ephesians as being faithful because he says to the elders there,

"For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27).

It is time for us to both know and follow "the whole counsel of God" and not simply to hear what we want to hear and splice and dice the Scriptures to fit our personal convictions and experiences. 

A pastor once told me that he believed in tongues (i.e. the "ecstatic", non-foreign-language, kind) because he experienced it. He did not look for it, but it suddenly came upon him. And he felt good about it. Therefore, regardless of what I showed him in the Scriptures, it would not shake his conviction that such tongues was both biblical and from the Lord. What is more, he said that I had no right to question the biblical basis of his experience since I had not experienced it myself. 

This pastor is not a dumb man, but I share this with you because this is how even learned men can be led astray. I am reminded of the Scriptures, where God says that He would even allow the prophecies of false prophets to come true, so that He might test His people's devotion to Him (cf. Deuteronomy 13:1-5). So even a "true" experience can be wrong. God commands us to trust His Word. As the Scripture also teaches, "We live by faith not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). And "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God" (Romans 10:17). Believe in what is written in God's Word, even more than what you see and experience.

This pastor got things backward. He chose to use his experience to test the Scriptures and to interpret it to fit his experience, rather than using the Scriptures to test and judge his experience. There are many reputable ministers today that fall into this error. I am reminded again of Paul's eleventh-hour warning:

Preach the word! Be ready in season andout of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables (2 Timothy 4:2-4).

Friends, a couple of comments here beyond the great things already shared by my friends on this site.

In Numbers 14:6-9, Joshua tries to encourage the people to trust the LORD and fight to take the Promised Land. In 14:9, he uses a peculiar expression: "for they are our bread" (NKJV). The NIV interprets the expression as "we will devour them," which captures the idea well enough. Parallel ideas can be found in Psalm 14:4 and 53:4, which speak of the enemies of Israel as those "who eat up my people as they eat bread." Now, from certain Fragmented Targums  (Aramaic translations of the OT near the time of Jesus), the expression "for they are our bread" was explained this way: "Just as our bread is easy for us to eat, so they are easy for us to destroy." In other words, the expression may not merely capture the idea that we can defeat our enemies, or that we can "devour our enemies" but that it will be easy for us to do. A modern-day equivalent might be something like "It will be a piece a cake for us to defeat them" or "we'll eat them alive."

Why is this significant? It speaks of Joshua's great faith in the LORD. He did not merely believe that Israel could win against their enemies. He believed that they could win easily. And his faith was not in their ability but in their God, for he says, "their [the enemies] protection has departed from them, and the LORD is with us" (Numbers 14:9).

Numbers 15:30-31 is one of few passages that speak of "the person who does anything presumptuously" as opposed to those that sin unintenionally. It is important to bear in mind that in the Mosaic Law there is no sacrifice, no offering, and no forgiveness for anyone who sins willfully. In fact, according to this passage, "his guilt shall be upon him" (Numbers 15:31). Yet, how many of us hardly give a thought to "unintentional sins." We usually overlook these or even forgive ourselves of such, yet they were weighty enough for God to develop a whole sacrificial system to cover them. Yet, for presumptuous, intentional, willful, premediated sins - there was no forgiveness for such in the Law. This is why what Christ accomplished for us is so uniquely wonderful and far-reaching. What the blood of animals could not atone, His blood atoned for us.

This is why later Paul would write that through the Mosaic Law no one is justified before God (cf. Galatians 3:11; Romans 3:20), such that salvation could never come by the Law but only by the grace of God. In fact Paul would go so far as to say that anyone who tries to be justiifed by the Law have forfeited the grace of God: "You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace" (Galatians 5:4).

The Israelites are such drama queens.  They all "raised their voices and wept aloud" as if they're going to die right at the moment.  I believe, though, that fear is a natural response when facing something or someone formidable.  I would have felt overwhelmed with fear when my naked eyes witnessed the size of the descendents of Anak who were 9 feet tall.  I could only imagine what would be like a 4 feet tall child facing against 6 feet tall man!!  If only they had not forgotten the very reason for their existence up to the moment.  Their journey from Egypt to Kadesh Branea was nothing but an unbroken series of signs and miracles.  It felt like to me as if the Lord had been saying what more could be done to win their hearts for Himself?  Once again, our drama queens grumbled and rejected their Savior even with contempt this time!  It just broke my heart.  Looking back on my past, my immaturity frustrated the Lord many times and yet He has been patient and kind to me.  He chose the Israelites as His own people even though He had foreknowledge of what they would be like.  Am I any better?  Not at all!  I was among "...no one righteous, not even one , no one who understands, no one who seeks God...", but He predestined me "to be conformed to the likeness of His Son" and called, justified, and even glorified me.  That is the very reason for Him to prevail in every course of our lives.  That is the very reason for us to live life worthy of His calling!  The pure love that overflow to the many is He whom no one can be compared to.  Amen!

Today I read Numbers, chapters 14 & 15.
 
After hearing the report about the people of the Promised Land the Israelites were afraid.  They complained and even thought about going back to Egypt.  For this the Lord told them that they would not enter into the Promised Land and would travel the desert for forty years.
 
Trusting in the Lord is not easy.  In ways, we deal with this on a daily basis.  Should I approach this person with the Good News or should I stand up for what is right?  As did the Israelites, we know what the Lord can do and still we often allow our fears to dictate our actions.