Do keep your Bibles out and turn back to the book of Numbers. We’ll be in Numbers chapter 14 this morning. You can find that on page 122 in the pew Bibles.
Before you read, just so you know, before we get started, that this sermon is for me, but I’m more than happy for y’all to listen in along the way because at some point in the last few years, I think I was enrolled in some sort of middle-aged training program to prepare me to be a grumpy old man! I have to say, I’m doing pretty well at this point! And I also have to say that some of you have already earned your certificates as well, or maybe well on your way to doing so too!
We’ve been in a series over the past few weeks in the book of Galatians called “Grace and Glory.” And we’re going to look at those very same things again this morning, grace and glory. Grace and glory are incompatible with grumbling, and yet we see that they all too often go together in our own lives and we see that they all too often go together in the words of Scripture. And we’ll see that they go together in the story that we will read from Numbers chapter 14 this morning.
Just so you can get caught up on where we are in the book of Numbers and the story up to this point, you will remember that God has led His people out of Egypt, out of slavery, to Mount Sinai, given them His Word, His Law, and now has led them to the very edge, to the borders of the Promised Land. And God called Moses to send out spies into the land of Canaan to search it out, to see what it is like. And they came back, those twelve spies, twelve people from each tribe of the people of Israel, they came back with a good report. The land was good, the land was fruitful, it was flowing with milk and honey, but ten of the spies complained and they said that the people there were too fierce, too intimidating, that the people should not go into the land – all of the spies except for Caleb and Joshua. So it’s with that bad report that discouraged the congregation that we now come to Numbers chapter 14.
So before we read Numbers 14, let’s ask God’s help and blessing as we do so. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for this account from the people of Israel and from Your faithfulness and patience with them. We ask that You would help us to see Your patience and faithfulness with us, that this story would be a lesson for us, pointing us to Your glory and to Your grace and to the sin of our own grumbling hearts. Would You make us, remake us into the image of Christ that we would bring about Your glory in all that we do and that we would minister Your grace wherever we go. We pray for the help of the Holy Spirit and we ask all these things in Jesus’ name, amen.
Numbers chapter 14. We’ll read the first thirty-eight verses:
“Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 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! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?’ And they said to one another, ‘Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.’
Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the people of Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes and said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, ‘The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.’ Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel.
And the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.’
But Moses said to the Lord, ‘Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for you brought up this people in your might from among them, and they will tell the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, O Lord, are in the midst of this people. For you, O Lord, are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them and you go before them, in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if you kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard your fame will say, ‘It is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to give to them that he has killed them in the wilderness.’ And now, please let the power of the Lord be great as you have promised, saying, ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ Please pardon the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt until now.’
Then the Lord said, ‘I have pardoned, according to your word. But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it. But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it. Now, since the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.’
And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, ‘How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. 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.’ I, the Lord, have spoken. Surely this will I do to all this wicked congregation who are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die.’
And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land – the men who brought up a bad report of the land – died by plague before the Lord. Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Well you may have noticed that one of the words that is repeated most frequently in this passage that we just read is the word “grumble.” We saw it in verse 2 where it says, “All the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron,” and then it comes again at the end of the passage that we read in verse 36 and it says that, “The men who Moses sent to spy out the land returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report.” Grumble.
Now as a word, I think “grumble” is a pretty good word. It’s kind of fun to say – grumble! I think maybe because it’s an example of onomatopoeia. It’s one of those words that sounds like what it means. Onomatopoeia. Some other examples of onomatopoeia are “purr” or “hiss” or “crunch.” By the way, those are sounds that my cats make when they are happy or hangry or eating their dinner. We like to say these kinds of words. They’re expressive, they’re fun words to say, and there’s something fun about saying even the word “onomatopoeia” and words that are examples of that! Well “grumble” is the same way. It sounds like what it is. There’s something when we say “grumble” that it tends to come out in sort of a low, guttural sound. It sounds like “grumble, grumble, grumble” with every word that we say.
And that’s the case here in this passage. Unfortunately, “grumble” is not only a fun word to say; it’s all too fun to do as well. It’s become an all too common part of our speech and conversation. I found a few statistics recently that said that the average person complains between 15 and 30 times a day and that in the midst of a typical conversation, that a person will complain once a minute in that typical conversation. Grumbling and complaining has become an all too familiar part of our lives and our conversations. And the habit of grumbling though is a terrible way to live. It’s offensive to others. It’s offensive to God. And if we have the propensity to grumble, then we are in good company in the pages of Scripture, especially what we find in Numbers chapter 14. It’s one of those instances where God’s people are grumbling about their circumstances, they’re grumbling against each other, and tragically, they’re grumbling against God.
We’ll see three things in this passage. We’ll see the absurdity of grumbling, we’ll see the awe of God’s grace – the awe of God’s glory – and the audacity of God’s grace. Grumbling, glory and grace.
The Absurdity of Grumbling
It’s almost embarrassing to call it out as we see it in this passage – the frequency at which the people grumble. You understand this is not an isolated event that we find in Numbers chapter 14. No, it is one of many episodes of grumbling that we see the people of Israel doing as they made their way out of Egypt and into the Promised Land that God had prepared for them. It started almost as soon as they left Egypt at the time of the Passover. In fact, to me, one of the funniest verses in the Bible, it’s also one of the more tragic verses in the Bible, is what we find in Exodus chapter 14 verse 1. The people, after they had come out of Egypt and they had come up to the Red Sea and they stopped and complained to Moses and they said, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have brought us out into the wilderness to die?” They’re saying, “Is it because the cemeteries were full in Egypt that you brought us out here to bury us?” There’s something about it, it’s so shameful that it’s almost hilarious. But that was their first response after seeing all that God had done for them in freeing them from Egypt and they turned so quickly to complaining against God. But that was just the start of it. They grumbled every step along the way. They grumbled about water, they grumbled about food, they grumbled about the journey, they grumbled against Moses and Aaron. And here in chapter 14, they are grumbling about the prospect of entering into the land of Canaan and going up against the intimidating people that already dwelt in the land.
And this is actually a turning point, a hinge moment in the entire book of Numbers. Now understand, Numbers is not the most exciting title for a book. It would be like writing a book about espionage and rebellion and bloodshed and seduction and then calling it “Data” or “Facts.” That’s kind of what we get with the book of Numbers. The whole reason that the book is called Numbers is because of what happens at the beginning and the end of the book. There are two censuses in the book. There is one taken in the very beginning in chapter 1, then we find another one that is recorded in chapter 26. And it’s what happens between those two censuses that is a result of what happens here in chapter 14. And it’s this. It’s that the first generation of Israelites who came out of Egypt, they are recorded in that first census in Numbers chapter 1, but then they all die. They die in the wilderness; they pass away. And it’s the second generation of Israelites that are recorded in the second census in Numbers chapter 26 who are then prepared to go in and take the land that God had promised to them. Why is that? Why is there this difference between the first generation and the second generation? Well it all comes from what happens in Numbers chapter 14 and the people grumbling against God and not believing what He had promised that He would do for them.
Now by the way, the Hebrew title for this book is much better. It’s “Bemidbar” or “In the Wilderness.” That’s what this story is about. It’s about what happens in the wilderness. There is excitement, there is drama, there is intrigue that happens in the wilderness. It’s unfortunate in some ways that we call it “Numbers,” but what you see over and over again in this book is that the people grumbled and complained. They grumbled and they complained. And that, after all of the blessings that God had provided for them. He delivered them out of slavery. He had enriched them with the goods of the people of Egypt. He had led them through the Red Sea and defeated their enemies. He had revealed His glory to them. He was with them. And He provided everything that they needed every step of the way. And that’s not even to mention all that He had promised that He would do for them. He promised that He would be their God and they would be His people. He promised to give them a land that was flowing with milk and honey. He promised to give them rest and long life and abundance and blessing. And yet, what characterized the people of God in light of all those blessings? Grumbling. It was absurd.
And you can see how ridiculous their grumbling was in this passage. They were totally ungrateful for what God had done for them and their ingratitude warped their whole sense of what was good and best for them. They said in verse 2, “Oh that we had died in the land of Egypt or that we had died in this wilderness!” You see how absurd it is. Their fear of dying in the land of Canaan made them wish that they had died in the land of Egypt or in the wilderness. They forgot what a blessing it was that they had not died in the land of Egypt and that God had provided for them every day along the way in the wilderness. And not only were they missing what God had done for them in the past, but they were also going to miss what God would do for them in the future. They would not see the “exceedingly good land” as verse 7 puts it. They wouldn’t see that land that was flowing with milk and honey. No, but verse 30 says “not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.”
You see what their complaining did. It caused them to miss both past and future blessings of God. And in all of that, they despised God. Verse 11 says, “How long will this people despise me and how long will they not believe in me in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?” You see, grumbling is despising God. Grumbling is unbelief. And in fact, grumbling is, in a sense, a consequence of unbelief. You see, their loud cry, their weeping, their grumbling that we see in verse 1 of chapter 14, it was because of their unbelief. Matthew Henry says that “Unbelief or distrust in God is a sin that is its own punishment.” You see, their unbelief was the reason that they were so miserable. Unbelief in spite of all that God had done for them.
I read an article recently. The title of the article was, “The Five Word Antidote to Grumbling.” And in it, the writer tells the story about an English preacher who was approached by a congregation member who was complaining about some aspect of church life. And the writer says that the details of that complaint had been lost overtime, but the preacher paused, he listened, and then he said something that was inexcusably rude but it cut straight to the heart of the problem. And he said five words – “It’s not about you, stupid.” And that’s not a word we should use, and even his response sounds a bit grumbly if you ask me, but isn’t that what grumbling is? It’s stupid. It’s absurd, especially in light of all God’s blessings and all of God’s promises. It should be embarrassing to us how much we grumble. And we complain about our circumstances and our relationships, we complain about church and work and politics and money. We are the people of Israel. And our past, our history is littered with episodes of complaining. And what do we need in light of that? We need, in the first place, a fresh view of God’s glory. We need a refreshed view of the awe of God’s glory as we see it in this passage.
The Awe of God’s Glory
And what happened when the congregation grumbled and refused to go into the land? Verse 10 says that “the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting.” And God said that He was going to wipe them out and He was going to start all over, beginning with Moses himself. You see, God was threatening to withdraw His glory from among the people. And for whatever that would have looked like – and it’s hard for us to comprehend His glory dwelling among the people as it did in this part of their history – but for whatever it was, it was the distinctive blessing for this people, that the Lord was with them, that He was in their midst, and He was before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And you see, it’s a recognition of God’s glory that made Moses and Aaron fall on their faces. It is a recognition of God’s glory that made Joshua and Caleb tear their clothes because the people’s grumbling was an offense against the glory of the God who was among them. And to lose His glory was disastrous. It was judgment of the worst kind. Think about the book of Ezekiel and Ezekiel’s vision of the glory of God departing from the temple and leaving the land. It is the unthinkable, the unthinkable judgment of God.
Molly has a student, my wife has a student – she is teaching first grade Bible here at the Day School. And the other day, one of her students came up to her and he got up really close and he said in a whisper, he said, “Mrs. Lowry, when you tell the stories, when you tell the Bible stories, I just imagine it. I just imagine it.” And he said that’s the favorite part of his day – to come and hear the Bible stories and to imagine them. You know what we have here? Here we have the people of Israel, they had seen God’s glory, they had seen the signs that God had done for them and God had promised them the land, and in that land – look at what verse 21 says. He says that “From there, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” The whole earth, filled with the glory of the Lord. And they couldn’t imagine it. They had no imagination for it. Their vision was dull, their hearts were hard, and they refused to believe what God promised and to go in and to possess the land. You see, they had in some way grown numb to the glory of God among them.
That’s a warning for us. Don’t forget what God has done for us and don’t forget what God is doing and will do for us in our Savior, Jesus Christ. And what Paul writes in the book of 2 Corinthians, he says that “God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” And he says elsewhere in that letter that we, that we “with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed from one degree of glory to another.” And he says, “Don’t lose heart, for this light, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” Can you imagine that? Can your hearts take in all that that means and all that God promises and what He is doing among us by His glory? We should be people, knowing the glory of the Gospel, we should be people who are filled with hope, people who are ready to see the best in the circumstances we are in, ready to see the best in those around us and ready to speak with an encouraging word to those who need it.
And yet how often are we quick to grumble about our nation, we’re quick to grumble about the economy or about one another. And of course there are legitimate reasons for lament and for grief. There is injustice. There is suffering. There are hard trials in our lives. And yet, what we are reminded of in the glory of God is that “the suffering of this present time is not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” And we are not those who grieve as those who have no hope, but we are those who grieve with hope, knowing that the certainty of resurrection, the blessings of resurrection life and the presence of God’s glory forever. So we need a steady diet today of nurturing our faith on who God is, on His glory. And we need to see again how He is at work in us and through us and in the world around us and for eternity to display His glory and to respond to that glory with hope, a hope. That we would be hopeful people in our speech, in our outlook, in our attitudes, in our character.
The Audacity of God’s Grace
And if we truly recognize God’s glory, His splendor, His holiness, His righteousness, His beauty, then we can’t help but to be overwhelmed by His grace. And there’s the audacity of God’s grace in this passage because we have no other claim on God, we have no other claim on God’s favor and blessing except by His unmerited grace. And Moses recognized that. And we see in this passage that Moses intercedes for the people in prayer. It’s a prayer that is staked on the glory of God. He prays that God’s glory would be displayed in His rescuing the people, that His fame would be magnified in not disinheriting them.
But he also prays with a plea that is based in the grace of God. And if you look at verse 18 again, Moses is reciting Scripture back to God in his prayer. These are verses that we find in Exodus chapter 20 at the giving of the Ten Commandments and then at Exodus chapter 34. And in verse 18, Moses says this. “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation.” See, he is repeating God’s promises, God’s promise of grace back to God in prayer. And there were no other grounds for them to receive God’s favor except by His grace. They had no rights, no merit, there’s no worthiness on their part. Only the grace of God, only the unmerited grace of God for them, initiated by God and kept by God’s steadfast love, never giving up love. That’s what Moses is depending upon.
And you notice in verse 20 how God answers that prayer. He says, “I have pardoned according to your word.” And God pardons them. He grants them forgiveness. And yes, there will be consequences for what they had done. They will not go into the land. This first generation will not go in. They will die in the wilderness. And the spies that brought the bad report, they died right there by a plague before the people. But God did not forsake this people and He remains steadfast to them. And He kept His promises to them and He would bring them into the land and by His mercy and power, God would use this people and bring about from this people in the fullness of time to send His Son, Jesus Christ, for the salvation of sinners and the forgiveness of sin and the gift of eternal life. He would do that from this people – this people who were so intent to complain; this people who were so intent to turn away from Him. God would bring about the fullness of His plan of salvation from them and for them.
That is the overwhelming picture of God’s grace and His love and it points us, from Moses’ intercession for them, to the intercession of one greater than Moses. And it points us to the intercession of Jesus who went for us and paid the penalty for us on the cross and died for our sins in order to give us forgiveness, to wipe our sins away, to take our sins as far as the east is from the west from us. That’s the forgiveness and the grace of God that we have in Jesus Christ. And how should we respond to that overwhelming display of God’s grace? It’s with gratitude. That we should be hopeful and thankful people. That our speech should be seasoned with thanksgiving and gratitude. Someone has said before that the bridge between theology and ethics, the bridge between what God has done and revealed to us in Scripture and in Christ to what we are to do and how we are to live, the bridge between those two things is gratitude. And we are to nurture gratitude by looking again and again at the good news of grace – the grace of God in Jesus Christ – so that we might be people filled with hope and joy and thanksgiving.
F. W. Boreham calls it “the branded brow.” The branded brow. He says that we are writing on our faces all the time, on our foreheads, on our brows, what is in our hearts. And he quotes a beauty specialist who says that “No face can show chronic discontent and fretfulness and retain the slightest claim to good looks.” This person says that “Our character marks itself on our faces.” And this beauty specialist says that no amount of creams, no amount of lotions or facials can remedy the lines and the expressions that are set on the face by chronic discontentment and a grumbling spirit. This was all written pre-botox of course, but you get the point.
What’s written on our faces? What comes out in our speech? Is it the absurdity of grumbling or is it an awe of God’s glory and a wonder at the audacity of God’s grace? So let’s replace a spirit of grumbling and a complaining speech with a speech of hope and gratitude to the glory of God and to His praise. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we thank You for this Your Word and these reminders of Your grace and Your glory in our lives and in Christ Jesus. Would You again work in our hearts, shape us, mold us, chip away those hard edges and the places that we are so intent to look inward and to live by our own pride and selfishness. And would You humble us again today and help us to see Your great love for us, undeserved love, grace on top of grace. Would You then make us people who are hopeful and grateful in pointing others to You. And we pray all this in Jesus’ name, amen.