Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 21, 2023 | Numbers - Trust and Obey

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May 21, 2023 | Numbers - Trust and Obey · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:00
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
0:01
unknown: Good morning.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Pretty good.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: And welcome to those of you in the cab building.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: So it's great to see Connor back.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: And I'm continuing the numbers series, and I want to start with a story.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: Coach Woody Hayes of Ohio State University is by any standard one of the great college football coaches of all time.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: Coached for 28 years for Ohio State, and almost half of those years, they won the Big Ten title.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: Woody Hayes was National Coach of the Year twice.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: He won the national championship three times, I believe.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: He's now in the College Football Hall of Fame.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: But rightly or wrongly, Woody Hayes is known most today for an angry outburst at Christmas time in the 1978 Gator Bowl.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: He was already unhappy.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Woody had a bit of a hot temper.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: He's unhappy he'd lost to Michigan twice that year, which is why he was in the Gator Bowl, not in the Rose Bowl.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: And with two minutes to go in the battle against Clemson, they were down two points, but they had the ball, and he had the best freshman quarterback, Art Schleester, in the nation.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: And so Woody Hayes, because Art Schleester was a phenomenal passer, had given up his three yards in a cloud of dust, and he was calling passing plays.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: And with two minutes to go, he called a simple passing play from Art Schleester.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: The nose guard for the defense for Clemson got knocked off the ball, which meant that accidentally he was in the perfect place.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: Accidentally, when the pass happened to fly his way.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: He stuck up a big mitt, and to everybody's astonishment, the ball stuck.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: And Charlie Bowen began lumbering down the field toward his own end zone.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: And he got knocked out of bounds on the Ohio State sideline, right in front of Coach Woody Hayes.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Charlie, hearing the screams of the Clemson fans, got up, waved the ball, and held his arms, and that was all it took for Woody Hayes to go postal.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Woody, a 65-year-old man, flew at Charlie and hammered him with his strongest blow just underneath his neck at the top of his chest.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: It's funny.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: When you watch that now, you realize Charlie was a tough guy, and being a nose guard, and he hardly felt it.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: And so he moved a step back.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Woody Hayes had to be pulled off of Charlie Bauman by his own players.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: And today, last I looked, there are almost 700 videos on YouTube about Woody Hayes, but by far, in a way, the number one video on Woody Hayes is this video of what is famously called the punch.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: It was the last game he would ever coach.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: His very close friend, Hugh Heinman of Ohio State University Athletic Director, fired him the next morning.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Woody died in 1987.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: But all of the good things he did had to some extent been forgotten.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: And that's what he died being known for.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a sad story, I think, really.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: But a similar story comes to us today from out of the Bible.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: It's in some ways the saddest story of the whole Bible, and I'll ask you to turn to it, either on your cell phone or in your hard copy.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Numbers chapter 20 is our chapter, and my title this morning is I Know What I Was Feeling, but what was I thinking?
3:58
SPEAKER_00: I know what I was feeling, but what was I thinking?
4:03
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure that's uh what Woody Hayes went around and around in his mind for the last years of his life.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh can I take a step back?
4:13
SPEAKER_00: We're close to the end of the Numbers series, but let me remind you again why this is such an important book for you, why it's such a great series.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Ian Dugood, uh a British uh scholar, writes in the opening to his commentary on Numbers the story of the book of Numbers is written to a people whose lives are lived between their redemption and its consummation, between the Exodus and the Promised Land, to live in between the times, and their present experience is not one of salvation, but rather of the wilderness along the way.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Christian, you and I live in the book of Numbers.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: We live in the middle of times.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: If I were to graph this out on a map, on the left-hand side of this map, you see the land of Egypt.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: And this is where you were before you came to Christ.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: This is when you were in bondage.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: This is when you and Israel were in slavery.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: And then in a in a great miracle, marked by the white line there on the left side.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: God rescued you.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: You escaped the land of Egypt, and you were born again crossing the Red Sea, born of water and the Spirit, and you crossed into the Sinai Peninsula.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: It should have only taken you, as Connor has said, a couple of weeks to get up to the promised land.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: But uh there was this titanic moment of unbelief.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: After a little over a week, you stopped, and the Lord said, send spies up, and you sent up spies, and then you decided there's no way we want to go up there.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: And you said, we'd rather die right here or go back to Egypt.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: And so God said, You'll get what you want, and for the next 40 years, God's led you, and you've wandered uh through the desert and through the wilderness.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: But now in Numbers chapter 20, we've come to the end of that time.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Now we've come to the end of the 40 years.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Almost all of that older generation has now died.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: And after the story that I'm going to introduce to you this morning, a famous story that you've heard of before, probably, you'll find that God tells Israel to move on up to the promised land, and all of a sudden a lot of things have changed.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: And you see that second white line on the right, and that's the line of entering the promised land.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: And I say, we live in the middle, in the wilderness days today, you and I, between salvation and the promised land.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: That's the book of Numbers that we live in.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: We're living in the story of the pilgrim's progress, right?
6:45
SPEAKER_00: The whole title of which is From This World to That Which is to come.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: And for some of us sooner, for some of us later, we will get to the promised land.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: We will see the celestial city as Pilgrim did, and we'll cross over.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: And when Christ returns in the air, all at once, we'll all cross over into the Garden of Eden, into paradise, and into the promised land.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: But my point is, this is an important book.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: We're about to finish it, but don't forget this book, because this book is the story, dear Christian, of your life.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: This chapter is called by some scholars the most enigmatic incident, verses 1 through 13 in the Pentateuch, or to translate that into layman's terms, it means it's it's a story that's harder to figure out, that's confusing to us more than any other story in the first five books of the Bible, and it begins this way.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: The entire Israelite community entered the wilderness of Zen in the first month, and they settled of all places in Kadesh.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Miriam died and was buried there.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: We're told elsewhere that she died in the last year of the 40 years.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: So she dies in the first month, and at the end of this chapter, you'll find that her brother and Moses' brother Aaron dies at the end of this chapter, right?
8:04
SPEAKER_00: So we're starting uh 40 years in the wilderness are now about to end, and we're starting something new.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Kadesh?
8:13
SPEAKER_00: They really go back to Kadesh.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Kadesh, you see, was where everything turned for the worse for Israel.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: It's where the beginning of the end happened almost 40 years before, because 40 years before in Numbers chapter 13, there at Kadesh, that place became ground zero of unbelief.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: The Lord had said to Moses, send men to scout out the land of Canaan that I'm giving to the Israelites.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: And the 12 of them, the spies, went up, and then they came back after 40 days and said, We can't go up there.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: They're stronger than we are.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: All the people we saw there are giants, which is a great exaggeration.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: We even saw the Nephilim there.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: I threw in the line for those of you who are reading the unseen realm and who know that the Nephilim are the offspring of human women and angels.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: We seemed like grasshoppers to them.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: And they go on to say, you know what?
9:08
SPEAKER_00: We would rather stay here and just die in the wilderness rather than go up there and just get brutally slaughtered and watch our children die.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord speaks to them at the end of chapter 13 and says, I'm going to do to you exactly as you've requested.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: None of you will enter the land of promise.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: All of you, 20 years or older, will die in the wilderness.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened at Kadesh.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: And now after 40 years, they've returned to this spot of unbelief.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's significant in light of what happens, in light of the, in light of, well, you'll see what happens.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: Oh, let's just go on with the story.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: In verses 2 through 5, we read, we read something we've read, I think, three times earlier in the book of Numbers.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: There was no water for the community, so they assembled against Moses and Aaron.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Surprise, surprise.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: The people quarreled with Moses and said, if only we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: I think that was the story maybe that Connor told a couple weeks ago.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Why have you brought the Lord's assembly into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die here?
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Why have you led us up from Egypt to bring us to this evil place?
10:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not a place of grain, figs, vines, and pomegranates, and there is no water to drink.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Right?
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Then Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting, that is the meeting with God, the tabernacle.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: And they fell face down, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord spoke to Moses, take the staff and assemble the community.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: You and your brother Aaron are to speak to the rock while they watch, and it will yield its water.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: You will bring out water for them from the rock and provide drink for the community and for their livestock.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: And that suddenly reminds us of something that happened just a few days after they'd crossed the Red Sea.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: At the very beginning, right even before their act of rebellion.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: At Rephidim there was no water, Exodus 17, for the people to drink.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: And they said, Why'd you ever bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children of livestock with thirst?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, they really liked their livestock, didn't they?
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Moses cried out to the Lord, What should I do?
11:15
SPEAKER_00: They're going to stone me.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: The Lord answered Moses, Take, here it is, take the staff you struck the Nile with in your hand, and when you hit the rock, water will come out.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: That's what we know, right?
11:26
SPEAKER_00: The rod of God, the extension of the arm of God that Moses has always raised and the plagues fell in Egypt, that he touched the water with and the Red Sea parted.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: And now he strikes the rock in Exodus chapter 17 and in 1440 BC.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: And yet something's changed, hasn't it?
11:47
SPEAKER_00: God's instructions are different.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Fourth line down, take the staff, okay.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Assemble the community, you know, brother R2.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: What?
11:57
SPEAKER_00: It's the first time he's ever told them to speak to the rock while they watch, and it will yield its water.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: You'll bring out water for them from the rock and provide drink for the community and for their livestock.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Moses did.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: He took the staff from the Lord's presence.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: So it's probably not his own staff this time.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: There's another staff, Aaron's rod that budded, is there kept in the Lord's presence in the Holy of Holies in the ark.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes God told him to use that one.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's the explanation for what's about to happen.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: But he takes that staff from the Lord's presence just as he had commanded him.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: Sounds good so far, right?
12:33
SPEAKER_00: The inspired writer says, just as he had commanded them.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: Are we thumbs up so far?
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: And Moses and Aaron summoned the assembly in front of the rock.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And Moses said, So far, so good, right?
12:46
SPEAKER_00: So far, so good.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: So, and we're expecting that he's going to what?
12:52
SPEAKER_00: He's going to speak to the rock.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Right, so and then we keep reading, whoa! We got a lot of uh red highlighted stuff here.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: Moses said to them, Moses, what are you doing talking to them?
13:07
SPEAKER_00: Listen, you rattles.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Must we bring water out of this rock for you?
13:13
SPEAKER_00: And Moses raised his hand.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: He swings that rod of God over his head and he brings it down full force on the rock.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: And he swings it back and he does it a second time.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: And what happens?
13:29
SPEAKER_00: God is so gracious.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people will say, you know, that guy's not preaching the gospel down there.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: It's a mega church.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: He's just, or such and such, you know.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: It's known that he's committed adultery, and yet that church seems to be succeeding.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
13:47
SPEAKER_00: Because God's so merciful and God is so gracious.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just care about people in charge.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: He cares about his people.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: And he's not going to deny water to hungry people and thirsty livestock.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: So even though Moses has flatly disobeyed him, abundant water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Let me talk about Moses' anger for a minute.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody better to talk about anger with or about than Moses.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: It's not the main message here, but it certainly was the button that caused this other stuff to happen.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Moses had a volatile, that's a nice way to put it, a volatile temper.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: Remember when he was a young man, and he saw, he'd raised in the palace, and he went out, found out he was a Hebrew, you know, and then he saw a Hebrew being oppressed by a slaver down there in Egypt.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
14:45
SPEAKER_00: He flew at the man and killed him.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know, with a rock, with his hand, killed him.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: I tend to think, yeah, do it again, do it again.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, because that's the kind of movies I like to watch.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, people who save other people.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: Superman, you know.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's not the way God describes it.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: God has no problem with Moses sharing his anger, but clearly went overboard because it's described as Moses' act of vengeance.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: He's hot-tempered.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: And then remember Moses uh has to run for his life and he runs clear east to land of Midian where he marries a Midianite girl and serves her father, you know, and so forth.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: And then they're in the back side of the desert, one day there's a bush that's burning, it's not burning up.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: And God, he meets God and God meets him, and there's an instant friendship between them.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: They become, the Bible says, friends.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: God's best friend on earth.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: God describes this as the most humble man on earth.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: God reveals his name to him right there in the bush.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: He says, I haven't been revealing, I everybody knows me as the most high God, but my real personal name is Yahweh, and that name means I'll always be with you.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: I'll be with you, Moses, I'll be with the people, I'll always be present.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm with you, you can count on me.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: It's all personal.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: From that moment on, we find that God the Father, who's invisible, oftentimes apparently comes down in the second person of the Trinity Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: And he speaks and he walks and he talks.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: With Moses, in fact, the last line of the Pentateuch is they spoke face to face as friends.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: So they're very close, but Moses, he, God says, Moses, I want you to go back and set my people free.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Moses says, I'm uh I'm not that kind of a guy, I'm shy, and so forth.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: And they have a little fight over this, a squabble.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'll I'll send your brother Aaron, he'll be your mouthpiece when you need him.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: They go back, and remember the plagues, and Moses, Moses goes against Pharaoh.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: It's mono a mano, and Moses keeps saying, you know, I'm gonna do this.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: And Pharaoh says, Well, if you do that, then I'll let you go.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: I'll let the people go, and then he reneges, right?
16:51
SPEAKER_00: And Moses gets angry and angry, and I think it's after the eighth or ninth plague.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: It says, Moses loses.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Moses went out from Pharaoh in a fit of fury.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: He was so upset.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: You can see how angry Charlton Heston is there.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Really mad, right?
17:11
SPEAKER_00: It's what happens.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: A lot of great men have a problem with temper.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: But finally they get out of the land and they go to Mount Sinai.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Remember, and Moses goes up to the top of Mount Sinai and he gets the tablets, and God carves tablets out of stone, and God writes the Ten Commandments on them and hands them to Moses, says this is the law.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: This is how you're gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna have a great time here.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be a great nation.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna lead you here to the promised land, and they're gonna know how to run things and so forth.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: And Moses comes down and wow, his own brother, and the people have what?
17:43
SPEAKER_00: They've built a golden calf.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: And he's so upset.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Moses totally goes postal, loses it.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: He's just irate, and he slams the tablets down.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm going, righteous anger.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: That's not the way it's described, you know, in the Bible.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's righteous anger.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: God's glad when we get angry at sin and so forth.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: But but there's a limit.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Right?
18:11
SPEAKER_00: That's why.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: When Moses, you know, climbs back up the hill.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I got a few pieces left, but I mean, you know, can we do this again?
18:18
SPEAKER_00: And God says, Yeah, you carve them out of the stone this time, and you write, you you chisel out the words.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you won't bust them next time.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: So, and now we get this story.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Moses, year after year, has led his cantankerous people out of Egypt.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: And he's done nothing but serve them, right?
18:38
SPEAKER_00: And again and again and again, three times before, in this book alone.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: They're whining and they're complaining and they're saying we hate you, and they're threatening to stone them and all this other stuff.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And finally, I think he's just completely added up to here.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: The anger of a hot-tempered man just completely boils over.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, unfortunately, what he does sends him over the edge.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to talk to you about anger because it's what gets a lot of us in trouble.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Right?
19:12
SPEAKER_00: I was reading recently about George Washington.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: George Washington is the founder of our country, just as Moses is called the founder of the nation of Israel.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: George Washington had such a volatile temper that when he was young, when he was in his teens and in his twenties, both his mother and his father and his mentor, he had a personal mentor, just said his passions just boil over.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: And even when he was older, one of the governors of one of the colonies who signed the Declaration of Independence wrote about him that he has tumultuous passions, which often accompany greatness, and you've probably seen it.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: You've seen a lot of great men, and they know the way the world should be or how that business should be run or how the church should go or whatever.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: And if you cross them, or maybe your father was this way.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: My father was a great man, but he he would be the first to tell you that he struggled with this.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Till a doctor later in life said, You're gonna kill yourself sometime by the way you explode at your family.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: And that was a we love that doctor.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: But this governor, this uh this comes from an article recently entitled General George Washington's Explosive Temper helped shape the man who forged a new nation.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: And the governor writes, his wrath was terrible, and those who have seen it see it boiling in his bosom, passion almost too great for human for humanity to bear.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: But later in life, as he became president, he set it as his number one goal to exercise self-control and control his anger, and he prided himself on his ability to control it.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: And other people wrote about it, John Adams wrote about, Thomas Jefferson wrote about how he clearly had this incredible temper, but he had learned to control it and they admired him for it.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: And all I'm saying is I think that even though it's not the major point, you and I should consider our anger.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there are all kinds of lists of levels of anger on the web.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: I picked the easiest one, the one that didn't have 10, 8, or 7.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: But there are just three things here.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: From the lowest level to frustrated, you know, where we're not getting where we want and we're gritting our teeth to getting actually anger, angry, where it becomes painful and our heart is beating fast, and our faces, you know, turning pink to total, absolute fury, where we just get completely angry and we're in danger of saying or doing something that can even ruin our lives at times.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Different levels of anger.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just, this is just a piece of advice.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: You know who you are if you struggle with this.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: And so the first, and not the modern, not the most important lesson from this morning, but the first of five lessons is learn to control your temper.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: And even though anger is not Moses' greatest sin in this passage, it's what releases his greatest sin.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: And we get a hint as to what is great.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Greatest sin is from on the smallest word in the passage in Hebrew.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Moses said to them, Listen, you rebels, must we, me and Aaron, must we bring water out of this rock for you?
22:15
SPEAKER_00: And I start going, hold on, Moses.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Moses, really?
22:20
SPEAKER_00: First person plural?
22:22
SPEAKER_00: We?
22:23
SPEAKER_00: You're bringing the water out of the rock?
22:25
SPEAKER_00: You're the waterbringer?
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize you've just butt-checked God out of the limelight?
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Backstage?
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And Moses raises his hand, strikes the rock twice.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: What's happening here, of course, is much more serious, and you can tell that from God's immediate response, because you did not trust me.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: This is an issue of faith, trust.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: The word is belief.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Did not trust me to demonstrate my holiness in the sight of the Israelites.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: You will not bring this assembly into the land I've given them.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: This is why it's the most enigmatic passage in the first five books of the Bible.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: What?
23:11
SPEAKER_00: What?
23:13
SPEAKER_00: God, God, God, punishment really doesn't fit the crime here.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: You've got to understand, this man for 40 years has been leading a recalcitrant people, and they've been threatening to stone him.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: They're the people of unbelief.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: He's, you know, you made him to be a guy with hot passions and so forth.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: He lost it for a little while.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: But then we realize God sees this as an issue of unbelief because you did not trust me to demonstrate my holiness, holiness and glory.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: Same thing inside of the Israelites.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: After 40 years, we're back at Kaddish and we're back at unbelief.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Moses, you are now recapitulating all that was the worst about the old generation.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: It's now rearing its ugly head in you.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: That is, you don't believe that I know the best way.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: You are rebel.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: In fact, God says to him twice in the next seven chapters, calls it rebellion against my command.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: Same word he used of those people back when they rebelled and said, We're not going to go up to the land.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that disobedience, when you disobey a direct command of God, it reflects disbelief?
24:29
SPEAKER_00: We don't put those things together, but the Old Testament does and the New Testament does.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: Disobedience is the result of unbelief.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: It always flows from unbelief, from act of unbelief, which does not believe that God knows what's best for me.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Which does not really believe that God has my best dead heart.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, I've got to get him out of here.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: I've got to handle this myself.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: I know the best way to handle this.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: And it isn't some mambi-pamby talking to a rock.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: It's showing them that you can be tough here.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: And they deserve a talking to.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: But of course, God started a new program.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: The last program was judgment.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Now 40 years are over.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: This is the first month of the new program.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: Now we're not striking things anymore.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: In fact, as they leave, they're going to start moving toward the promised land, and shockingly, somebody comes to stop them, and God says, defeat them.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't said that for 40 years.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Now all of a sudden we're talking victory.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Now all of a sudden we're talking a whole new program.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Moses is still back in the old program.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And he's stealing God's glory with his words.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Yelling at them.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And he's stealing God's glory with his actions, striking the rock.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm the great wizard of Israel.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm the waterbringer.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Moses.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: That's not your stick.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: That's not your rod.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: That's God's rod.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: That's not your axe.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: That's not your hammer.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: And he's using the rod of God to steal God's glory.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord says in Leviticus, by those who come near me, who's near him?
26:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, Moses, Aaron.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: I must be regarded as holy.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: So what are you saying?
26:33
SPEAKER_00: You mean an average Israelite could perhaps have gotten away with that?
26:36
SPEAKER_00: It's exactly what I'm saying.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Joe Israelite could probably get away with that, but no, no, no, not if you're near God.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: Not if you're the leader.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: By those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy, and before all the people, I must be glorified.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: I need my holiness demonstrated in the sight of all Israel.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: Lesson number two, friends, I'll leave this one quickly, but I gotta say, and I didn't know how to say this well.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: The higher you are, the heavier the blow.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Or as Jesus says in Luke 12, to whom much is given, much is required.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Or as Jesus Brother James says in chapter 3, teachers will incur a stricter judgment.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: If God has given you a responsibility of being an elder or being a Sunday school teacher or being a leader, a Christian leader in the community or something like that, you've got to know.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: The last 40 years I've had a sticker on my computer.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: It finally just fell off.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Others may, I cannot.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Others may, I cannot.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: There are things you cannot do.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: If you're the father or you're the mother or you're a Christian leader, or you're a teacher.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: By those who are near me, I will be glorified.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: But why, we ask still, why still, why such a harsh penalty?
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Why not kick him in the rear end, or you know, I don't know.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is that what Moses did can't be underrated.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: He did what we would call a glory grab.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: He stole God's thunder.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Glory grab, you've seen it at work.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you've seen it at church.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: It's when someone attempts to grab or take credit for what another person has accomplished, you know.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: It's where an executive at work, when the company succeeds, you know, tries to, you know, say that it's really because of him or her that the company is successful.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: It's when a father or mother or a grandparent, she or he, uh when the grandchildren win awards or when they turn out great for the Lord, you know, implies that it's all because of them that it happened.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I picked up a book recently because I admired a Baptist college basketball coach who'd won the national title and so forth, and he'd written a, he'd written a book.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: And uh and I was stunned to find out that after his team won the national title, he was irate because the sports media were giving the credit to the player on his team, the best player on his team, who won most valuable player, who also hit the final shot and gave them the victory in the championship.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: And he was he was irate because he knew for sure the reason they had won the national title was because of his great coaching.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: And he was irate that somebody else was getting the credit.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: And you read that and you're and you're disgusted.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: Imagine how disgusting it is for all of creation.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: For someone to come and steal the glory and the holiness of the God of space and time in the universe, for someone to come and grab the spotlight off of God Himself and swivel it onto himself to say, it's we have to do this.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys gonna keep on, you know, breaking our backs?
30:03
SPEAKER_00: So that's why this is so important.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: God expresses it clearly in Isaiah 48 when he says, For my own sake, for my own sake I do this.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: How can I let myself be defamed?
30:14
SPEAKER_00: I will not yield my glory to another.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's serious, isn't it?
30:19
SPEAKER_00: God uses the word defame to describe what happens when someone accepts credit for things.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're tempted to do it all the time, aren't we?
30:29
SPEAKER_00: We receive awards, even when you're younger and in school and and you're honored for something that you've done in school, or maybe an athletic award, and then you grow up, and then somehow you do get credit for taking a company to success.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Or you have some sort of something that you do that's public, you're on TV or whatever, and and a mic is thrust in front of your face, and you're tempted inside yourself to go, about time, about time.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, been working all these years to do this.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: You're Moses.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: 40 years, been dragging these people along.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: It's at that kind of a moment that what you need to do is take a step back from the mic and remind yourself of the words, not to us.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 115, verse 1, not to us, Lord.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: Not to us, but to your name.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Be the glory.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: And don't steal God's credit.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: That's lesson number three.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: Take the blame, but give God the glory.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: What a line that is in that psalm.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: One more time.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Say it in Latin.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Look down at the verse where I've put those words.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: In Latin, non-nobus domine.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Non nobis domine.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Not to us, oh Lord.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: It's become a famous verse because in 1870, William Wilber, force, by the way, was known as maybe the greatest uh person in England.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: He was like a boy king at age 21.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: He'd been elected to the parliament.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: He was known as the greatest orator in the whole land of England in the 19th century.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: And his everybody said, you know, the sky's the limit.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And he was extremely ambitious at age 21, and then five years later, he had what he called the great change.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: He came to Jesus Christ as a savior.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Now he was, he he believed that Britain should reform.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: He he, you know, if you've heard Charles Dickens, you know why it needed to reform.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: And he was a member of 69 reform organizations to help the poor and everything else.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: And he was going to quit parliament, however, and is going to go out into the ministry until John Newton, I think it was, urged him and said, you can do far more for poor people and slaves and so forth in Parliament.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, he stayed in Parliament.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: And William Wilberforce, this amazing young, short, five'3 orator, would stand up in parliament and talk to them about slavery.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: For 46 years he did this, and finally in 1870, and then even Fuller, you know, uh a few years later, they actually abolished slavery.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: He's the greatest social reformer the world has ever seen, in all likelihood.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: William Wilberforce.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: And when he walked out of parliament, when they had finally passed that bill, all the news people, everybody came to fed him and say, This has been the conclusion of your great life.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: This has been just amazing.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I'm sorry.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: I can't talk to you.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: I need to go home.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: And he went home and he opened his Bible to Psalm 115 and he meditated that afternoon on the words, not to us.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, not to us, but to your name.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Be the glory.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: He died three days later, having fulfilled the job that God had given him to do.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: A verse is also famous because it appears on a 1989 movie called Henry V.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, you should see that movie.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: I think it's now free on YouTube.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: It's actually Shakespeare's Henry V.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: It's poetry, but it's spoken so well by the Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branaugh in the movie that you can understand it.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: And it's the story of 1415, the Battle of Agincourt on St.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Crispin's Day in October 1415.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: The English were trapped.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: Their king Henry V and their small troops, completely outnumbered by the French, and they're trapped in France.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: They can't get over.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: They're blocked.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: And so Henry V gives a speech.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: And his small army, facing complete extinction, annihilation, goes to battle.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: And in what's considered still by the English one of the greatest battles in their entire history.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: They come up with an amazing victory over the French, probably due to the fact that 80% of their army was longbowmen.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: But as a result, so so you see at the end of that movie, Henry V is seated there, and that's where this clip is taken.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: He fought himself hand-to-hand combat.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: And they come to give him a report and they say the French have lost 300 and 400 of their top nobles in their whole land.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: And they've lost thousands upon thousands upon thousands of the greatest knights.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: They all lie dead there in the field.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: And then all these, besides all these other soldiers that are dead.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: And he says, How about how about our troops?
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, we've lost this person and this person and this person.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Three lords and nobles.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And other than that, they say in the movie, just uh 25 soldiers.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Historians now say probably lost over 100, but still, it's amazing.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: And then they're all grinning and they're expecting him to be incredibly happy and to celebrate, and they're and they're starting to praise him, and he doesn't smile, and they can't understand it.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: And uh and he says, um, I'll just I'll just see if I can remember it.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he says, Would you pronounce to the army that death will come to anyone who gloats over this victory or brags about this victory in any way?
36:17
SPEAKER_00: It shall only be said of this victory that we acknowledge that God was on our side.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: And then his command was to order the entire army to kneel and to sing the well-known song, Nonbus Domine.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 115, not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: And the reason it was in the 1989 movie is because it was in Shakespeare's poem Henry V.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: And the reason it was in Shakespeare's poem Henry the Fifth is because it actually happened 150 years before, according to all historians.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: The entire English army knelt and prayed the words of Psalm 1151, the words that should resonate in your hearts and in mind when we are tempted to do what Moses did and grab for some glory for ourselves, either with our actions or by our words.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Moses regretted that the rest of his life, as you can imagine.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't live a lot longer.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: His two siblings had died, but he'd live another year.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: And he begged the Lord, not once, not twice, but three times, please let me cross over and see the beautiful lands.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord said to me after the third time, that's enough.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: Don't speak to me again about this matter.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: But then at the end of the Deuteronomy, God says, I want to show you the beautiful land.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: And he takes him up to the plains of Moab on the east side of the Sea of Dead Sea.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: And he says, That's the land, isn't it beautiful?
38:01
SPEAKER_00: By the way, he says, that's where the tribe of Dan will live.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord points just like a friend.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: That's where the tribe of Ephraim will be.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: That city you see right there is the city of palms, Jericho.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: And then if you're standing behind them invisibly, these two friends, one great, one beloved, your blood chills as you hear God say one more time that you will not cross over.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: And the next sentence is, and Moses died there, and God himself buried him.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, the sad thing is that this can happen to any of us.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: Lesson four and five, this is the end of my talk.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: Even the best of us can fall.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: And it only takes a moment to ruin your life.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: No greater king than David, but he did it.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: When lust rose up inside David, he forgot about the Lord and cheated on his marriage and on his friend Uriah.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: The greatest disciple did it when fear rose up inside Peter.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: He denied that he knew the Lord, time and again.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: And the greatest leader on earth at that time, the most humble man on earth, did it when anger rose up inside him, Moses, disobeyed the Lord's direct command and dishonored him publicly.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: And it only takes a moment, right?
39:38
SPEAKER_00: Just the lust of a moment, just the fear of a moment, just the anger of a moment, but after the feeling passes, and we're left with only regret, we shake our heads and we mutter those words.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: I took a country song to the top of the church 20 years ago this month.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: Song entitled, I Know What I Was Feeling.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: But what was I thinking?
40:07
SPEAKER_00: Country singer who sings it sings about the mistakes he made at ages 18, 19, and 21 of the stanzas that I can quote says, by the county line, the cops were nipping at our heels, pulled off the road and kicked it into four-wheels, shut off the lights, and tore through a cornfield.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: I know what I was feeling.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: But what was I thinking?
40:32
SPEAKER_00: As David watched the newborn son of his sin die in infancy, he must have thought, I know what I was feeling with Bathsheba, but what was I thinking?
40:41
SPEAKER_00: As Peter saw the look of hurt in the eyes of his Lord walking out of the courtroom, and his own eyes began to gush bitter tears.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: He must have thought, I know what I was feeling at the fireside, but what was I thinking?
40:55
SPEAKER_00: And as Moses heard God pronounce judgment and then time and again begged, can I please go into the land?
41:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm so sorry.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: I exploded in anger and stole your glory.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: He must have thought, I know what I was feeling.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we have been saved by you a number of times already in life from making a mistake that would ruin our lives.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: We've gotten really close to serious fall.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for sparing us, but we do pray that you remind us that you deserve all the glory and all the credit, and it's not to us, oh Lord, not to us, but to your name belongs the glory.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.