Back to Numbers 21. As the Jews, I guess you'd say the Israelites,
I don't think they were called Jews yet. The term Jew, as we English-speaking
people say it, is from the name Yehuda. In fact, I recall seeing documentaries
about the Holocaust and the Germans referred to the Jews as Yehudin. And the reason they referred
to them as Yehudin is because that's essentially the name Judah. All those names from the Bible
that we pronounce with our English J sound actually begin with a
Y sound. Yehuda was Judah's name. And from what I've read, our
English J was once pronounced like a Y. But they were called Jews because,
if you'll remember that after Solomon died, the Israelite nation
split in two. And the northern 10 tribes continued
on with the name Israel. They were known to the world
as the Kingdom of Israel. The southern two tribes, went
by the name of Judah. And when the Lord sent the 10
tribes, the northern 10 tribes into captivity, you don't really
ever hear of them coming back again. It was the kingdom of
Judah that the Lord restored. Consequently, they became known
by that name, Judah. even one of the provinces, Roman
provinces, in the Palestinian area. It was the Romans who first
called that area Palestine. And one of the districts in that
area was Judea. And this is all derived from
the name of Judah. And that name means praise. So that's why Paul says no man
is a Jew outwardly. He is a Jew who is one inwardly
and has his praise from God. From what little I've studied
about the Hebrew language, they loved puns. And often the names
given to places and even people were kind of a pun about a characteristic
of that place or person. But these Israelites, as they made their way from the
bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land, they encountered many difficulties. There was times when there was
no food, times when there was no water, times when enemies
attacked them. Now in every instance of this,
the Lord delivered them. But they were getting near again
to the promised land. They had been there before, they
had been on the Jordan, ready to cross over, but 12 spies were
sent in, and 10 of those 12 spies said, yes, the land is like the
Lord said it is, but there's a couple of things he didn't
mention. And the biggest one is this,
there's giants there. And we were like grasshoppers
in their sight. And there, I think the Bible
calls it evil report, and I guess it was morally evil, but I think
by the word evil, they just meant they're bad report. They report
that things in Israel weren't good. discouraged the people
and they began to grumble and complain against God, and they
refused to go in because of unbelief. And so God swore in his anger
that none of those who were 20 and older, I can't remember if
it was 20 and older or above 20, but right about then, none
who were of that age who rebelled there at Kadesh Barnea and didn't
go in. None of them would ever enter
his rest. And if I have my chronology right,
all of that happened about two years after they left Egypt. And for another 38 years, I won't
say they wandered around the desert. God led them around that
wilderness until all of those people died. And now it's getting
close to the time when those who had not fallen under that
judgment would have opportunity to enter the land flowing with
milk and honey. Now remember that these people
had never seen the land of Canaan. They'd only heard about it. And
I'm sure that most of what they had been told about it made it seem to them like a heaven
on earth. And their interest in that land,
I know these are the chosen nation of God. I'll put it that way,
chosen nation. I was about to say the chosen people of God,
and in the old-fashioned sense of the word people, That would
have worked, but nowadays we just use people to be the plural
form of person. But this chosen nation of God
was made up of people, most of whom did not spiritually believe
God in the sense that we would think. And their interest in
the promised land was just like the interest you and I might
have. You know, if God says in a certain time, I'm gonna give
you that section of land over there. You know, all they saw
was land that was supposed to be beautiful land, fruitful land,
land that would make one rich. A land where they would be at
ease. Well, as they got near to that
place, and you might want to just go back one chapter here. Yeah. Chapter 20. They came to the
land of Edom. Now the shortest route to the
land God promised them was to go through Edom. Now, who do
you think made up the citizenry, the population of the land of
Edom? Esau's descendants. So now we have Jacob's descendants. Jacob, who stole the birthright
by deception, stole it from his brother Esau. and Jacob, the descendants of
Jacob, approach Edom, a direct route through that land would
get them to the promised land quicker. And they consulted. They didn't. In fact, the Lord had told them
specifically You are not to take any of the land of Edom that
is your brother. And so they weren't going to.
They just wanted to walk through. They promised not to take anything,
or if they had to take something, they'd pay full price for it.
All they wanted to do was to be allowed to walk through. Well, you know, It may have been
400 years, maybe even close to 500, since Jacob had taken the
birthright from Esau. But how many 500-year-old wars
are still being fought now in our day? Animosities. And so when they contacted the
leaders of the land of Edom, the land of Esau, said, can we
pass through? The Edomites, descendants of
Esau answered, this is in chapter 20, verse 18, you may not pass
through here if you try. We will march out and attack
you with the sword. And the Israelites said, look,
we're just going to go on the main road. We're going to take the interstate.
We won't even get off at the exit, you know? And if our livestock
drink any of your water, we'll pay for it. We're not here to
cause you trouble. Again, they, the Edomites, answered,
you may not pass through. And they backed up their answer
saying that Edom came out against them with a large and powerful
army. Verse 21 of chapter 20, since
Edom refused to let them go through their territory, Israel turned
away from them. Now, if it had been of the Lord,
for them to go through the land of Edom, God would have told
Moses, don't worry about that army, start marching. I will
deliver them into your hand. But here's one of the interesting
things. God made a promise to Abraham, made a promise about
Abraham and his seed. Now understand, and there's a
really good book, if you ever can find a copy of it, read it.
It's called Abraham's Four Seeds. And the fellow who wrote it did
a very good job of showing how when the Scripture refers to
Abraham's seed, there are four groups he is talking about. But in its most basic sense,
it means any of the natural descendants of Abraham. and God promised
to bless them. Now, the Lord said that it would
not be in Ishmael that Abraham's seed would be called, but in
Isaac. But you know something? The Bible
says God blessed Ishmael because he was also the seed of Abraham. But Isaac is going to be that
seed which leads to the ultimate seed, Jesus Christ. And so it
comes down and it gets down to two generations down from Abraham,
and it's said before Jacob and Esau are ever born, the elder
will serve the younger. Which meant Esau, though he was
the first one born, he would not be the firstborn. I know
that sounds contradictory. Remember, firstborn is a title,
and usually it went to the first son born in a family, but not
always. In fact, in the lineage of our
Lord Jesus Christ, there's some notable examples where the firstborn
of the household was not the first one born. For
example, Solomon. So Jacob, though he was the second
one, now they were twins, but they made a big deal out of.
you know, when it was time for a woman to give birth. And they
knew that Leah, not Leah, Rachel had two within her, because the
Lord had said that, you know. Evidently, the two boys inside
of her were tussling, even in the womb. And I've never been
pregnant, so I don't know what that feels like. But I can imagine
if one can make you feel uncomfortable, imagine two vying for the same
space. And the Lord said, there are
two nations in your womb. So when the first one came out, they named him Esau. And when the second one came
out, he reached out his arm first. And in an act of providence,
you know, I'm sure Jacob was not aware of what he was doing,
but he reached out and he grabbed Esau's heel right from the womb. And the Hebrew word for heel
sounds very much like the Hebrew name. Actually, it's Yaakov. We pronounce it Jacob, heel grabber. And indeed, God arranged things
such that Esau, the real firstborn, is set aside And Jacob, the ne'er-do-well,
is given the blessing of the household, and he becomes the
firstborn. And Esau said, well, did you
name him Jacob? And enmity rose up between them,
and Jacob went off I mean, if he's not going to be the firstborn,
he's not going to be in the house. That was his attitude. He said,
I am not going to be under Jacob's authority. And so he left. And he married wives from the
surrounding country. And he established the nation
Edom, and it's right there, south and a little bit east of Israel. So here's Jacob, his descendants,
coming to the descendants of his brother Esau, and he gets
a little bit of payback. Jacob gets a little payback for
what he did to his brother. Esau said, you walk around. And I looked on the map, that
was no short walk. And we find here in chapter 21, they traveled from Mount Hor
along the route to the Red Sea to go around to eat them, but
the people grew impatient on the way. Now this is God's chosen nation,
and we take it as a picture or illustration of God's holy nation,
His church, a spiritual nation, a kingdom of priests. Now I read this, and I read that line, that people
grew impatient on the way. And I thought to myself, those
stiff-necked Jews. God had, in a sense, bent over
backward Bringing them out of Egypt. Holding the sea open for
them. Feeding them with manna from
heaven. Having water come from the rock.
Had pheasants come. He's doing everything to take
care of them. And they grew impatient. And
I was going to get upset at the Jews until I thought, yeah, that's
pretty much like us, isn't it? I like the way it's put here.
They grew impatient. the way. Now if God had wanted to give
them the straight route through Edom, he could have done it.
But that was not his way. You and I who believe in our
Lord Jesus Christ, we are on God's way. And what is God's
way? I am the way, the truth, and
the life. We make a big mistake if we think
that our path to the perfection, we'll call it the perfection
of our rest in Christ, If we think that the path there
is going to be easy here, we have mistaken what the Lord has
said. Our Lord forbade the Jews from
taking any action against the Edomites. And that required them to take
the long way around. and they got impatient. You know,
even we who believe that salvation is by grace and entirely by the
work of the Lord, we often fail to realize that not only is the
ultimacy of our salvation, the perfection of it, not only is
that by the grace of God in every respect, Every step we take in getting
from here to there is also of the Lord and of His grace. Oh, we get impatient. I do. And don't get me wrong,
I'm not impatient to die. Death is death. And in our flesh,
we do not long to die. But if we are believers in our
Lord, here's what something we do long for. We long to be with
Him. We want to be perfected. We want this business of God's
salvation to be completed in us. We realize, as we preached
a month or so ago, we are complete in Him. That is, there's nothing
that needs to be added in order to bring us to full salvation
in Christ. We've got all we need, it's there.
Some of it though, is ours by way of inheritance. And it waits
for us in glory. And we can grow impatient for
that. And while on the way, notice
what or how they expressed this impatience. Verse 5, they, who? Well, the chosen nation of God. And if we are to take them as
illustrations of God's church, that means that people within
the church can say things like this. They may have learned not
to say them out loud, but they say them in their heart. When the difficulties of the
way confront them, They spoke against God and Moses
and said. Now, I don't know that any one
of them said a word directly to God. I don't know that any of them
said, God shouldn't have brought us out of Egypt. And while the
scripture says they spoke against God and Moses, I imagine all
their speaking was directed at Moses. But when you speak against the
Lord's messenger, particularly with respect to the message of
His deliverance, us preachers, we're not inviolable. It's not
as though there's nothing about us that you couldn't find fault
with. I'm sure you find fault with me, and if you don't, come
over to my house sometime, I can load you up with a list of my
faults. Things that I would understand
perfectly well that might upset you. However, when you speak
against one of God's messengers with regard to the message of
God's grace that he has preached, and the conduct of his declaring
it and leading the sheep of God, if he's doing this according
to God's direction, to speak against him is to speak against
God. Now again, I'm trying to explain this without putting
us preachers up on a pedestal. We don't belong on a pedestal.
Don't put me on a pedestal, because if you put me on a pedestal,
God's going to knock me off, and I don't want to go through
that. I am just one of you who has been gifted to preach. Nonetheless, the message that
I preach, I believe it to be God's message. And to grumble against it would
be to grumble against God. I'm a false prophet. In which
case, you know, if you all look in the scriptures and you say,
look, I'm reading the Bible and what you're saying isn't what
the Bible said, well then the proper response to that is to
gather them in together and say we need to find somebody else
to occupy the pulpit. So they grumbled against Moses,
and that was also grumbling against God, and look what they said.
Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in this desert? Oh, how quickly they forget the
promises of God. They weren't going to die in
the desert. They were going to spend more
time out in the desert than they originally thought they were,
but they weren't going to die there. The Lord had made promise. Oh,
it's so easy in the midst of the difficulty of the way to
forget the precious promises of God. Peter says that we have exceedingly
precious promises. How do you think of that? Not exceedingly harsh demands. not exceedingly lofty aspirations,
exceedingly precious promises. I love promises, don't you? That
is, I love God's promises. Promises of men aren't worth
anything. I can't help myself for saying this. But you know,
we are going into a presidential election. And if you like promises,
well, you're going to enjoy the next year. But I'll tell you
something, they're going to promise, promise, promise. And well, I
wouldn't bet on the promises. I certainly wouldn't rest my
soul on it. You can rest your soul on the promise of God. He
said, look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.
That's a promise. It's a promise of God. It's a
promise so powerful, even though it involves the greatest of blessings,
to be saved from the wrath of God, to be saved from everything
that sin has done to us, And it's to be had for a look. But that's a promise you can
hang your soul on. And then they said this, there
is no bread. That wasn't true. There is no
water. That wasn't true either. God
sent them bread every morning. And he had caused water to flow
from a rock. Now, imagine, you know, imagine
yourself out there in the wilderness. Now, I don't know, you know,
it says desert. I don't know really what that
area is like or what it was like, what we're talking 3,500 years
ago. I don't know if it was the kind
of desert we think of with camels walking across it and all that,
you know, and sand and nothing but sand dunes, you know, like
you think of Saudi Arabia. I don't know if it was that kind
of desert. The word translated desert, as far as I understand,
it just means wilderness. It's where nobody lives. But they weren't going to die there.
God was giving them bread every day. And imagine being out there,
and it's been a while since you came across a well or a river
or whatever, and you made your complaint, which should have
been a confident prayer, but often our prayers are a little
more than complaining, but the Lord answers them anyway. They
made their prayer, and so God told Moses, they were at a rock,
to smite the rock, to hit the rock with a stick. And so that's what Moses did.
Now we know this, Moses had no power to make water come out
of that rock and neither did that stick. So this was all symbolic. He was symbolic of the governance
of God and the protection of God over his people and that
staff that he carried. You know, that's a, I guess,
a kind of a picture of leadership and probably, who knows, it may
have been a shepherd's crook. Because remember, for the 40
years before he began to lead the people of Israel, he was
a shepherd for his father-in-law. So maybe it was a shepherd's
crook, I don't know. But he took that thing Now imagine you're
standing there and Moses whacks that thing and suddenly out of
that rock comes water. Now some might say, well it was
just coincidental that he hit that rock just when an artesian
well was about to come out of it. It doesn't matter. First of all, God could have
made water come right out of the middle of that rock if He
wanted to. He may have had one of His, understand that word,
one of His artesian wells find a way of escape from underneath
that rock at that point. It doesn't matter. It's something
He did. And if I saw that, I would hope that
I would think I don't guess we ever have to worry about water
again. And Paul says that rock followed them through the desert. Now I don't think that he meant
by that, that that rock scooted around the ground with water
flowing out of it. But to wherever they went, the
water from that rock followed them. But now they're thirsty again.
And then this next line. And we detest this miserable
food. What were they talking about?
The manna. Now they didn't detest it the
first day it fell. They craved it. Imagine, you know, they were
used to hard labor. The Lord brings them out of Egypt.
And not only are they no longer going to have to make bricks
to build Egyptian buildings, they aren't even going to have
to grow food. They weren't going to have to
stop for a while and sow some wheat, let it grow, harvest it
and then grind it up, put it in sacks and carry it along with
them. Every day the Lord made manna, and interestingly enough,
you know what the word manna means? What is this? That's actually
what it means. What's this? Because they woke
up that morning and the ground is covered with it. And it didn't
need to be ground up. You didn't have to do anything
to it except make it into dough and bake it. But you know how it is. You eat
the same thing over and over and over and suddenly it loses
its appeal. The old phrase familiarity breeds
contempt. Now what does that manna represent? Our Lord Jesus said, I am the
bread that came down from heaven. Now I'm sure every believer here
would like to say, I will never grow weary of Christ. I will never wish I had something
more or something else." And maybe by the grace of the
Lord you won't ever say that. But don't make a boast. I hate having to apologize, I
do. I mean, for small things, yeah,
that's not a problem, but I mean, I hate it when I really do something
bad and you gotta go back with your tail between your legs,
you know, and humble yourself before another person and apologize.
And I hate to have to, the southern expression is eat crow. When
you made a big boast and then you couldn't come through. So I tend not to make many boasts. I may make them in my head, but
I don't do it out loud. Don't want to get embarrassed. Brethren, I hope that we never
grow weary of the continual preaching of Christ. Week after week, day after day,
living on Him and Him alone. I pray the day never comes when
any of us might say, I'm impatient, I want more, I want something
else. This just isn't doing it for
me. That bread that came down from
heaven. I don't know what it was, the
Bible doesn't tell us what it was. But you know what? Whatever
it was, it was everything necessary to keep a man alive. The bread didn't fall from heaven
so that you could go out and capture some kind of desert critter,
cook him up and put him between two slices of manna bread. That was the entire menu. It miraculously fell from heaven,
I suppose it was miraculously designed to have within it everything
necessary for the well-being of the Jews. And you know something?
Oh, let's lay hold of this. Paul says, not Paul, Peter, Through
the knowledge of Him, that is Christ, we have everything we
need for life and godliness. You eat food that you like, and
then they tell you at the store, but you need to buy some supplements.
And they'll give some kind of excuse why food doesn't have
enough in it. Let me tell you, here is a food and you don't
need any supplements. Even if you like manna, you could
be tempted to say, but you know, while I may not like other food
as well, there's things in this other food that'll help me and
I'll eat it anyway. It's like trying to get a kid
to eat broccoli. You know, you might get him to say, well, I
prefer my pancakes with syrup, but yeah, I realize there's something
in the broccoli that I need and I need to supplement. Not at
the same time, but you get my point. Brethren, if you have
Christ, there is nothing out there, spiritually speaking,
there's nothing else that can even help you. Everything you
add to Him hinders you. Well, what happened to the people? Well, the people suffered for
what they did. Some died. Snakes came in. Don't know what
kind of snakes they were. But they were venomous snakes,
and their venom evidently burned, because I think, strictly speaking,
the words are fiery snakes. But it was deadly. The Lord disciplined
His people. Even in the New Testament, we
find that there were people whom the Lord put to death because
of what they had done against His church and His gospel. They
didn't go to hell, but they were taken out of this world. Well, they were weary of the
way and impatient, but suddenly they're dropping like flies.
So they came to Moses. And they said, we sinned when
we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord
will take away the snakes from us. And Moses prayed for the
people. You know, it's written that Moses
was the most humble man that lived. And here you can see it. A few
days before, they were complaining to him. finding fault with him. And now they're in trouble, and
who do they go to? Moses. And does he say, well, you know,
you brought this on yourself, deal with it. No, he prays for
them. The Lord told him, make a snake, put it on a pole, anybody
that's bitten can look to the snake and live. Now, why a snake? Remember that it was a snake.
who brought our race into sin. The devil by way of a serpent.
And I won't try to explain it, that's just the way the Bible
says it. So that snake represents our rebellion. Now, referring
to the scripture that our brother James wrote, even as Moses lifted
up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Our Lord
was lifted up, lifted up on a cross. And our
sin and our rebellion was laid on him and dealt with there. That serpent looks back to the
Garden of Eden to find its significance as sin and it looks forward to
the cross to find its significance in our sin bearer. Paul, in a
way typical to him, he said, God has made the one who knew
no sin to be sin. Now, we don't need to try to
make anything mysterious out of this, as though some kind
of magical transformation in our Lord took place. That's not
what he's talking about. It was a way that Paul spoke when something
was so connected something else. For example,
it doesn't say that Christ was cursed for us, nor does it say
he was made a cursed thing for us. Paul wrote, Christ was made
a curse for us. In other words, he's saying that
Christ and the curse were so united, they were indistinguishable
from one another. And our sin was laid on Christ
in such a way, indistinguishable. So he's like that serpent on
the pole, and here's the promise. Look and live. It wasn't. Drag yourself to the
center of the camp and with tears and wails tell Moses how sorry
you are. That's what it was. Most of them
wouldn't have made it. It was not look and see with
absolute clarity and understand with perfect insight the significance
of that pole and that serpent. It was very simply this. God
said, Moses, you make a snake, you put it on a pole, you stand
it up there in the midst of the congregation, and anybody that
looks, any bitten person that looks, will live. Brethren, I enjoy the doctrines
of the gospel. I enjoy studying them. I enjoy
preaching them. I explain them the best I can.
But let's face it, these things are too deep for us to really
grasp because they're things of God. But here's something
we can grasp. God has made it so simple. He
says, you've been bitten. You're dying. Here's Christ. Look and live. But I can't see
well. I didn't say look sharply. Just
look. It's right over there. Turn your
eyes that way. But it's fuzzy to me. Doesn't
matter. Because the power is not in your eyesight. The power,
so to speak, was in that snake. Oh, people. You know, they say, oh, when
I have greater faith, I'll call on His name. Why? How great a
faith do you need? Is your heart broken? Whether
you are presently in a lost condition, or if you're just one of those
believers who has grown impatient on the way, and you've grumbled
against God, grumbled against His providence, and so the Lord
has brought discipline to you, there's a way out of this, and
it's not difficult. Look. When Brother Spurgeon was converted,
the text the preacher used was from Isaiah. Look unto me and
be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. And he went on to
say, and Spurgeon said the guy could barely, you know, he was
not the preacher, because the weather kept the pastor away.
It was just some layman stood up and filled up the time. But
he could barely do anything more than repeat the text. But he
said things like, look, look, looking's easy. He says you don't have to have an
education to look. You don't have to be strong to
look. You look. Some of you here today have looked. And wasn't it wonderful when
you saw You didn't have good eyes when
you looked, but the Lord's given you better eyes. If you ever get weary on the
way, impatient, and your heart begins to crumble,
it will bring you pain. But there's deliverance. Just
look to the same place you looked at the beginning and ask God
for grace to never look away again. And ask Him for grace that no
matter how long the way is, no matter how difficult the stretch
between here and when you see Him, you're going to walk His
way. No.