There are the eternal consequences of not believing God and rejecting Him. What were the temporal consequences for the people of Israel? “They certainly shall not see the land of which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who rejected Me see it.” The people were led by the hand out of bondage. God showed them signs that He was with them and was doing great things for them. He gave them signs and wonders to show them that He is God and should be trusted and worshipped as God. Yet what did the people do? They complained. They murmured. They grumbled. They were not happy with the lot that God had cast for them, so they cried out that they wanted to go back to the taskmasters. So God said, “Fine. Those who have not trusted Me, those who have complained about being brought out from under the whips, those who want their old life as slaves, they shall not see what I have promised and will die before they see the Promised Land.” This is a foreshadowing of what will happen, eternally, to those who reject Christ. He came to Earth, clothed in human form, lived a perfect, spotless life, performed many miracles, raised the dead, cleansed the lepers, died on the Cross and was raised from the dead, and was seen by over 500 witnesses. Yet many still do not believe. They reject Him, they mock Him, scoff at Him. They would rather live in their lost state than to bow the knee to the One who died for them.
They don’t believe the words of Holy Writ, that the words testify of the God who became flesh to take away their sins. They would rather remain a slave to sin. See, in this life, every single person ever born is a slave. You are either a slave to Satan and sin, or you are a slave to Christ and righteousness. Romans 6:16—Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? This is one of those places where Paul quotes Jesus, although not verbatim. Jesus Himself says that while we are still in our sinful state, we are slaves to sin. John 8:34, 36—34 Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin…36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” Paul says almost the exact same thing in Romans 6:17-18—17 But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. 18 And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Before we knew Christ as our Lord and Savior, we were slaves of Satan. We carried on however we liked, we ran around, cussed, swore, maybe drank or did drugs. Peter speaks of these things in 1st Peter 4:3—For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. But then the Holy Spirit gets ahold of someone, changes them on the inside, makes them love the things of God and hate the things of the flesh. We learn that the things we used to do when we were slaves of sin were displeasing to God. And we begin to embrace the things that please God. We are, as Paul wrote, a “new creation” (2nd Corinthians 5:17). We look back at our former self and think “why did I do those things?” Our goal now is not to please our flesh or to please others, but to please God.
Caleb understood this. Numbers 14:24—“But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it.” Just as there are few that find the narrow way today, there were even fewer of the people of Israel who saw the Promised Land. Why? Was he better and more intelligent than the others? No. He had a different spirit. What spirit was that? The Holy Spirit. It made of him a different man, just as it makes believers today different people. Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon on this text entitled “The Believer a New Creature”, said:
“The affections being changed, the whole man is on the way towards a great and radical renewal, for now the emotions find another ruler. The passions, once rabid as vultures at the sight of the carrion of sin, now turn with loathing from iniquity and are only stirred by holy principles. The convert grows vehement against evil, as vehement as he once was against the right. Now he longs and pines after communion with God as once he longed and pined after sin! The affections, like a rudder, have changed the direction of the emotions and meanwhile the will, that most stubborn thing of all, that iron sinew, is led in a blessed captivity, wearing silken fetters. The heart wills to do what God wills. Yes, it wills to be perfect, for to will is present with us though how to perform all that we would we find not.”
But once we know the truth, we must be careful that we do not use our newfound position in Christ as a way to mock non-believers for their ignorance of God and Christ. In the same sermon, he said “A man may be changed from one sin to another—from reckless profanity to mocking formality—from daring sin to hypocritical pretension to virtue. But such a change is as very far from being saving and not at all like the work which is called a new creation.” When we see our salvation as something we did by reciting a prayer and going to church, we run the risk of looking down our noses at those who used to live just as we did. We can be like the Pharisee in Luke 8:11-12, when we should be more like the Publican in Luke 18:13. We should see our salvation as something that God wrought in us, that He, for whatever reason (I do not know, God knows, to quote Paul) He saw fit to place in us a new heart, to write His laws upon that new heart, and to make a new creation out of us. And although God turned away these people from the Promised Land for rejecting Him ten times, how often are we to forgive a brother who sins against us? Seventy times seven times (Matthew 18:22). In fact, I dare say God has forgiven each one of us seventy times seven times just this morning alone!
Caleb understood who God is when those around him did not. And this is what spurred him on through the desert—across the blistering sands, in days of hunger and thirst, when everything in him may have been longing for bread and water, for melons and leeks and garlic and cucumbers. But he did not allow his flesh to be overcome by these longings. His eyes were on the promise God set out before him. Millennia later, Jesus would speak about not desiring to go back to the slavery of sin, and to keep moving forward to what God has in store for us. Luke 9:62—“No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” He gave us a warning in another place about the consequences of forgetting the goodness of God in rescuing us from unrighteousness and instead looking back to the things that He rescued us from. Luke 17:32—“Remember Lot’s wife”. Let us never look back fondly of our days as slaves of Satan, but always remember we are slaves of God. Let us not be as the unbelievers, but, in lifting them up to God, let us look kindly upon them, praying for their salvation, and looking forward to the reward God has in store for us.
Numbers 14:25, 40-45—25 “Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valley; tomorrow turn and move out into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea”…40 And they rose early in the morning and went up to the top of the mountain, saying, "Here we are, and we will go up to the place which the LORD has promised, for we have sinned!" 41 And Moses said, "Now why do you transgress the command of the LORD? For this will not succeed. 42 Do not go up, lest you be defeated by your enemies, for the LORD is not among you. 43 For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you shall fall by the sword; because you have turned away from the LORD, the LORD will not be with you." 44 But they presumed to go up to the mountaintop. Nevertheless, neither the ark of the covenant of the LORD nor Moses departed from the camp. 45 Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who dwelt in that mountain came down and attacked them, and drove them back as far as Hormah. (In verses 25-39, God restates the fate of those who rejected Him and complained against Him.)
Here we see an example of what can happen to a new believer, when they think they can make up for their past sins by performing actions which are not sanctioned by God, and can ultimately lead to disastrous ends. Instead of going in the way the Holy Spirit leads, and just trusting in Christ for their salvation, thinking that God’s grace isn’t enough and they have to do something to “earn” their salvation, the person decides they know better and they plunge headlong into some endeavor that can, potentially, lead them away from God. Likewise, the people in Numbers were instructed by God to go by way of the Red Sea. He had a particular way He wanted them to go, because of their disobedience. He did not order them (and did not want them) fighting the Amalekites and Canaanites in the valley; He wanted them to just go their way by the Red Sea. Why? Perhaps as a reminder of the sea He parted and brought them through on dry land.
Doesn’t He do that sometimes? When we are foolish and rebellious against Him, doesn’t He bring to our mind something great He has done for us, just so we can remember who He is? He doesn’t want us to fight a battle, He just wants us to be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). But the people didn’t do that. They had battled the Amalekites before (Exodus 17), and they beat the Amalekites. Surely they can beat them again! Just one problem. In that battle, they had Moses and Joshua to go with them. And, most importantly, they had God fighting for them. This time, they did not. Neither the ark of the covenant of the LORD nor Moses departed from the camp. This time they were on their own. And what happens to the people when they fight a battle alone, without God on their side? They get throttled. Just like anyone trying to fight a spiritual battle without God is going to get throttled. Why? Well, just as the Amalekites and Canaanites were experienced in battle and the people of Israel were not, Satan is experienced in spiritual battles, having lived for thousands of years and being of a stronger spirit than any human being who does not have the Holy Spirit going into that battle. Besides, Satan has an entire band of demons he can call and they will fight battles for him. How often do new believers—and mature believers sometimes—think they can beat Satan through their sheer willpower or smarts? They think Satan gives up more easily than he actually does. And things go about as well as expected. “Do not go up, lest you be defeated by your enemies, for the LORD is not among you.”
Luke 11:24-26—24 "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' 25 And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. 26 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first." Why does the person fall? Often they forget to ask God’s help. Often, the reason can be summed up in one word: pride. Proverbs 16:18—Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Paul warns us to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought. 1st Corinthians 10:12—Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. And perhaps a lack of repentance. A lack of humility. A lack of the fundamental understanding of who God is, which they had displayed before them ten times that we know of. But they were determined they were gonna show God that they knew better, that they could defeat their enemies all by themselves, that they didn’t need God fighting for them, because they were enough. The truth is, they were not enough. We are not enough. Those we call “mighty men of God” are, as Paul Washer says, “only weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and merciful God”. In the words of the Old Testament scholars Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch—
But instead of bending penitentially under the judgment of God, they resolved to atone for their error, by preparing the next morning to go to the top of the mountain and press forward into Canaan. And they would not even suffer themselves to be dissuaded from their enterprise by the entreaties of Moses, who denounced it as a transgression of the word of God which could not succeed, and predicted their overthrow before their enemies, but went presumptuously up without the ark of the covenant and without Moses, who did not depart out of the midst of the camp, and were smitten by the Amalekites and Canaanites, who drove them back as far as Hormah. Whereas at first they had refused to enter upon the conflict with the Canaanites, through their unbelief in the might of the promise of God, now, through unbelief in the severity of the judgment of God, they resolved to engage in this conflict by their own power, and without the help of God, and to cancel the old sin of unbelieving despair through the new sin of presumptuous self-confidence—an attempt which could never succeed, but was sure to plunge deeper and deeper into misery.
Nevertheless, neither the ark of the covenant of the LORD nor Moses departed from the camp. Perhaps this is the reason the Israelites thought it would be a good idea to bring out the Ark of the Covenant when the Philistines were defeating them in battle in 1st Samuel 4:3-5—3 And when the people had come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, "Why has the LORD defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the LORD from Shiloh to us, that when it comes among us it may save us from the hand of our enemies." 4 So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from there the ark of the covenant of the LORD of hosts, who dwells between the cherubim. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God. 5 And when the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the camp, all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook. They thought of the Ark of the Covenant as a sort of good luck charm that would help them turn the tide and defeat the Philistines. But what they did not take into account was that Eli, who had judged Israel forty years (1st Samuel 4:18), had never corrected his sons from the evil they were perpetrating in taking away God’s portion from the sacrifices of the people. This was near the end of the period of the Judges, when every man did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25). Eli was one of those, and allowed evil to continue, unlike those such as Gideon and Ehud and Othneil, who led the people to repentance and favor with God. Which is why the wife of Phinehas, son of Eli, said when the Ark was captured and her husband and his brother killed, that "The glory has departed from Israel!" (1st Samuel 4:21). Let us never see God as one who will simply grant our wishes, which would make us sovereign over Him, but rather let us follow the lead of YHVH and do what is right in HIS eyes, that we do not fall into the hands of the evil one.
Jesus Christ is Lord.
Amen.
