Consequences of Disbelief: The 40-Year Wandering

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk

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Make all your friends wild the streams come true by introducing them to the

Pike Podcast. Think of the point that it vote for me and I make

all your wildness dreams come through Pedro for Pedro. So hey, today we

are reading one of the most famous passages in the Book of Numbers, and

it is Numbers thirteen where the spies go in and they check out the promise

life. It's going to be super cool. It is. So First of

all, we have a social media minute. Oh is it going to be

one minute? Yeah? Well, I don't know. There's some really nice

things that people have been minutes minutes Okay, So the first one, Lynn

B says, thank you for such a great episode, whatever episode that was.

It really is a great way to start the week with a reminder how

much God has done for us and still continues to do for us. It

is true. That's awesome. And thank you Lynn for writting in because that's

right. Well, this is awesome. By the way, send your comments

in because we love hearing this stuff. It gives us the drive to keep

going absolutely. And then the next person this which is Charman D. Charman

D says so happy that we are not only blessed to be one of those

countries, but we are the most blessed to have Jeff and Chris as our

pastors. Wow. Wow, that's a statement. Great job great job on

not only this podcast that you are doing every day, but on being great

pastors and serving here at Age Church. They attend our church. So thank

you, Charmon. That is unbelievable. Thank you. That is great,

too, great comment. It's almost a little embarrassing, it is. Thank

you. And then Karen h says, you guys are so funny. I

love it. Never thought learning the Bible would be so much fun. You

guys make it easy to understand. Bless you both. Oh, I would

say very enough. Some of us on the podcast are funny, Thank you,

Jack. They are so kind of you. Others are just being carried

over. No what just when I think you don't have it in you,

you surprise me all the time. Just give you massive compliments. That's how

you are here. Don't be hard on yourself. I think you're kind of

funny, too funny looking funny. But you know what that other phrase though,

never thought learning the biot would be so much fun, you guys make

it easy to understand that phrase. You guys make it easy to understand.

I've always felt like family ministries in particular talking you know, all these years

as we would hire new family ministries people, I would say, I think

one of your number one jobs is to make sure that our kids and our

young people don't leave going that's the most boring thing I've ever heard. How

do we take the most exciting story in all of the annals of human history,

the most amazing story. God invaded this planet because he loved us,

and he rescued us from the dragon, and he sacrificed himself for us.

How do we take this the most amazing story ever and bore people put them

to sleep with it? Right? And not only actually a lot of people

are good at it. I know, I've I've worked for I heard a

lot of news in my day, buddy, But how do you do it?

My friend Dave Wilson always says, uh uh. He says, when

somebody's falling asleep in church, wake up the preacher. Yeah, that's true,

that's what he says. That's true. Yeah. So, uh,

you know, I think that's one of our jobs is this is an incredible

story. We have to get out of the way of it a lot of

times. Now we can, you know, to make it understandable. If

we can shed a little bit of light, if we can turn some light

on, and you know, expose the texts and say, hey, this

is this is what it means. That helps a little bit. But the

other part of it for us too is we we horse around a lot,

but this is pretty much what we do. So if we don't get the

if we don't get the horse around a little bit together doing this kind of

stuff, anything, that's right. Uh. But but more than that,

I think that my the reason why I'm a pastor is because I sat underneath

a pastor who made the Bible understandable and relevant and uh, and I was

I was continually u flabbergasted that he could take a passage that at first glance

was like, what does that mean? And then all of a sudden I

could walk away and go, oh, my goodness, it means this one

thing or these three things or whatever it was. And I was like wow.

And it was something that I remembered, something that I understood, and

something that was relevant in my life today. It was so practical and applicable

and beneficial. And I thought to myself, man, that is amazing.

And and and by the way, I compared that to my growing up experiences.

So I was a teenager at that time, but growing up I was

just like, well, you know, geez, the Bible is the most

difficult thing and most boring and irrelevant thing in the world. And then all

of a sudden you compare it, you know, this juxtaposed position here,

and I'm just like, this is this is how it should always be.

Right. Yeah, so hey, we take that as a great compliment.

Yeah, for sure from Karen. So thank you so much. Karen.

All right, well today we're jumping in. He never thirteen. We just

talked about making exciting and then he starts, he starts yawning. He's already

board late. The situation always gets me. I have to fight it,

so numbers thirteen. Basically they've come up to just so you know, up

to this point, the people of Israel have been wandering a little bit.

They've been heading towards the Promised Land. The Promised Land represented so much to

the people of Israel and figuratively represents, you know, where God brings us

to ultimately, the promised land of a relationship with Him and in eternity.

But so they're heading towards the Promised Land and they decide, hey, it's

getting a little scary. What should we do? And they come up to

the Jordan River on the they're on the east side, which would be in

what would be now modern day nation of Jordan, and they're ready to go

across into Israel. And so with that being said, numbers Chapter thirteen versue

says that the Lord now said to Moses, send out men to explore the

land of Canaan, the land I'm giving to the Israelites. Send one leader

from each of the twelve ancestral tribes. So Moses did as the Lord commanded,

and he sent out twelve men, all tribal leaders of Israel, from

their camp in the wilderness of Paran. And then for the next eleven verses

it spells out all those names, guys with names like Guel and Knabi and

Amiel. So I'm not going to try to read them all. What is

it wolf? See, Yeah, you can go ahead and read them if

you like. Makis so from all all of the tribes of Israel Rau.

Then in verse sixteen it says, these are the names of men Moses sent

out to explore the land. Moses called Hoshiah, son of None by the

name Joshua. Moses gave the men these instructions as he sent them out to

explore the land. Go north through the Negev into the hill country. See

what the land is like, and find out whether the people living there are

strong or weak, few or many. See what kind of land they live

in? Is it good or bad? Do they their towns have walls or

are they unprotected like open camps? Is the soil for or poor? Are

there many trees? Do your best to bring back samples of the crops you

see. It happened to be the season for harvesting the first ripe grapes.

So they went up and explored the land from the wilderness of zen as far

as how do you say, rayhab near le boheimoth ye judgement, That's exactly

what I was going to say. Going north, they passed through the Negev

and arrived at Hebron, where Hymen, the Sheshai, and Talmai, all

descendants of Anak lived. The ancient town of Hebron was founded seven years before

the Egyptian city of Zoa. When they came to the valley of Eskol,

they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes so large that it

took two of them to carry it on a pole between them. They also

brought back samples of the pomegranates and figs, and that place was called the

valley of Eskol, which means cluster because of the cluster grapes the Israelite men

cut there. After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned to

Moses, Aaron and the whole community of Israeli kidish in the wilderness of Puran.

They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the

fruit. They'd take it from the land. This was the report to Moses.

We under the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed

a bountiful country, a land flowing with milk and honey. And here's the

kind of fruit it produces. But the people living there are powerful, and

their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, descendants of

Anak. The Amalekites live in the Negev, and the Hittites, Jebusites and

Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live along the coast of the

Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan Valley. But Caleb tried to quiet the people

as they stood before Moses. Let's go at once and take the land,

he said, we can certainly conquer it. But the other men who had

explored the land with him disagreed. We can't go up against them. They're

stronger than we are. So they spread this bad report among the land among

the Israelites. The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes

to live there. All the people we saw were huge. We even saw

giants there, the descendants of anak next to them, We felt like grasshoppers.

And that's what they thought too. The next verse says, in the

whole began, the whole community began weeping aloud, and they cried all night.

Yeah. So, and the story does go on. But the bottom

line is is we know the ending of this story, which I don't think

we're gonna touch on next week or tomorrow. So the story is is that

regardless of Joshua and Caleb's plea to go into the land, they decide not

to. Right. Yes, so because we're not doing it right right numbers

twenty h yeah, yeah, so we just have to summarize. And because

of their disbelief, then what happens They wind up wandering in the wilderness for

forty years until everybody voted not to go dies boom, that is the way

to say it. And so and so God says, God says, here's

the promise. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lead

you to the hence the word promised land, the land that has promised to

you. And then Moses says, hey, go check it out. And

just like God delivered the Egyptians from the or excuse me, the Israelites.

The Egyptians, right, I mean they were they were weaponless, Egyptians had

chariots and uh. And yet you know God, God delivered them. And

not to mention, you know the stories of old right, you know how

God just always shows up for uh, you know, his people and uh.

And yet they felt like God was not big enough apparently to overcome the

people in the Promised Land. Right, but it was everything he promised it

would be, yes, right, They they literally came back. Hey,

these grapes we had to we had to hang between a on a pole between

the two of us. Can you even imagine? Yeah, you and I

carried a cluster of grapes back from Kroger in a little bag. In fact,

in fact, it's many clusters of grapes right right, because that's how

big they are. That's how small they are compared to them, you know,

between a pole. Are you kidding me? I can't by the way,

I can't even imagine swallowing you rape that size, right, eat it

like an apple? Right right? So, uh so it was everything God

promised it would be. Yes, why wouldn't they just go, Okay,

we're going to take it. So Caleb goes, let's just take it now.

Let's not wait another minute, let's go. Joshua is the other one

who votes and says, hey, we should go, right. Joshua's Moses's

right hand man. Joshua believes that God's going to keep his promises. But

everybody else was voting on the was voting based on the problems they could see,

and Joshua and Caleb saw all the promises God had made. There's a

big difference between those two things. If you live your life like you know,

it's there's what twelve was it? How many spies went in? Twelve?

Was it twelve? Yep? Was twelve? Yeah, so you get

all these spies they go in and two of them say we can do it.

Yeah, twelve men went to spy ocaine and ten we're bad and two

we're good. I remember that one. Yes, yes, okay, so

listen, I know that we're technically not assigned chapter fourteen, but can I

skip ahead and sort of read these verses? We don't actually have to have

them on the screen, But this is one of my favorite parts of this

story that we didn't get the chance to read. So let me set the

context. So, out of all these twelve spies, they're all saying,

no, we're afraid they're giants. And then, as we already have read,

Caleb is the only one right, He's the only voice of reason.

He says, come on, let's go, And then they say and they're

like, no, we Then Joshua gives this incredible rousing speech. It reminds

me of the Brave Heart speech from this day to that would you not sacrifice

that for your freedom? Right? You know all that? So it says

in fourteen it says that the Joshua and Caleb tore their clothing in despair,

right, and they said to all the people, the land we traveled through

and explored is a wonderful land. And if the Lord is pleased with us,

he will bring us safely into that land. He'll give it to us.

It is rich land, flowing with milk and honey. Do not rebel

against the Lord, and don't be afraid of the people of the land.

They are only helpless pray to us. Think about how inspiring that is.

They have no protection, but the Lord is with us. Don't be afraid

of them. I mean, that's an incredible speech. Then the next verse

says, but the whole community talk about stoning and cale, so it's like

the best reaction ever, right, It's it's like it's like this incredible speech

and then you know, like a movie cuts and then they they see the

guys tied up or something. It's like they talked about starting them give me

a rock. I'm gonna shut these guys up. This incredible, rousing speech

that we but we know is true. And you know, there's so many

sermons in there, but but first of all, here's here's a sermon.

We need the voices of faith around us, right, so that when we

live our lives and we come across all the things that come our way,

you know, we face trials, we face things that discourage us, we

lose faith, we doubt God's promises. We we we face things that are

just we seem insurmountable, the odds are incalculable. And then there's always that

it seems like God's you know, sends hopefully that voice of reason. Maybe

it's our mom, or maybe it's our wife, or maybe it's a good

friend. And they're the person that you already know what they're going to say,

right, because they're oh, here they come. They're going to say,

you know, have faith, believing God, go to church, read

your Bible, just be strong, you know. And when we're when we're

far from God, sometimes it's the last thing we want to hear. So

sometimes what we do is we want to avoid people like that, right,

we avoid. And as a pastor, you know this to be true.

You try to call somebody to encourage them, what do they do? They

dodge your calls or they avoid your texts. Right. I was thinking of

a really good friend of mine. He's really discouraged about his marriage, and

uh, and they're on my heart like every other day, and and I

and I texted this guy and I was like, hey, I know you

don't want to hear this, but I'm your pastor and your friend and so

I would be doing myself and you a disservice if I didn't have to,

if I didn't say this to you. I said, but I'm praying against

what you're feeling. I'm praying against it, man. And I said,

I know you don't want to hear that because I'm a good friend of yours.

But it's because I believe God wants this for your life. Right.

And he didn't respond, He didn't respond at all, And I didn't expect

him to to be honest with you. But but I hope I'm the voice

of Joshua and Caleb, you know. But but here's another here's another sermon

that's in here. You ready for this? Remember those names you skipped?

Yeah, okay, think about all the names that you hear today. Your

name is Jeff, My name is Chris. Do you know somebody named Joshua?

Yes? Have a brother named Joshua. Do you know somebody named Caleb?

Yes? Now do you know somebody named Zacher No? Or Maki Nope?

Or or Vafzi No? Right? So you don't you don't know any

of those guys, right? Or Emuel or Sepher or Nabi or Uel or

Gotti or Gidiel or Palti or Shamuah. The reason why you don't know that

is because those guys are guys that nobody wants to remember, right, They're

relegated to the dustbin of But who are the heroes of faith? The names

that have carried on through the generations. Joshua and Caleb. They're the only

two of the twelve that you still hear people naming their children after. And

that's got to be a massive sermon right there. Well, God chose to

name his son, yes you will, Yeah, that's right, right,

right, right, So Joshua's name, Jesus name was Joshua, right right,

yeah, yeah, yeah, in that language. So it's pretty amazing.

Yeah, and so and so it's yeah, that's you know what,

to be honest with you, I I think I heard that a long time

ago, and I've really completely forgot that. But you know, it's it's

it's just an incredible tribute that. So here's the sermon that's hidden in there,

and that is that which we do today. We may not see or

think that our choices will live past our lifetime, yeah yep, but yet

they do, don't they. It's right, our choices of standing up for

faith. What it was the Bible saying, our choices not only move the

kingdom forward, but you know, you never know this side of eternity.

Uh, you know what what would living for God will mean to the generations

that come behind you? And only until we get to the other side of

eternity where we know that what we do on this earth has affected those who

have come behind us. And so you know, here's Joshu michaeleb probably in

this moment, having no idea. You know that here we are talking about

them thousands of years later, maybe our children after them. You know.

For me, I used to teach this a lot to my young adults and

some of my high schoolers as well. When the crowd seems to be fueling

its own hype, go against the crowd every time. The crowd is almost

always wrong, just even in our modern times here recently, I just recently

read an article. It started off in the Wall Street Journal. There was

a link from the from there to another article. Right, so there's two

articles about think of how many things mainstream America now just mainstream media, mainstream

America has gotten wrong just in the last five or six years. Let's talk

about masks and mandates and pandemics. Let's talk about politics, let's talk about

burning down cities, Let's talk about all these things that then now mainstream media

is retracting or stepping away from a conspiracy and just shouting down anybody goes,

Have you ever thought about Rah viciously attacking anybody who gave an opposing view at

all? Right? And now how many things? It's dozens of things that

literally had people fighting at Thanksgiving dinner over things that turns out to be not

true. Right, but we're gonna go ahead and fight with each other.

Yeah, this is my shocked face. Yes, right, and and here

you go. You have twelve go in, yep, two come back and

go we can do it. God problems, We can do it. And

it's everything you said it was right, and ten go, yeah, there's

some problems over there, and those big guys we can't beat them, right,

and the whole crowd wanted to kill the two. Right, he said

we can do this, and I know that we can do it, But

can I remind you of God's promises? They have no protection. God is

with us. They are like pray to us. These are some of the

most inspiring unbelievable things that Joshua is pointing back to God. It's not just

inspiration, it's inspiration attached to promises. So under all the uncertainty over the

last several years, I've had a lot of people want to come in and

say, Jeff, I just instinctively am thinking there's something not right in society

today, and I'm not sure where I should go. And I would always

say I'm not sure either, but I can tell you when the whole group

is going that way, go the other way, go the other way.

Right. And so when you're not sure what you should do, what are

God's promises, and go God's promises, the direction of his promises, go

his way, regardless of what everybody else does. Because here's what I know.

They went in to spy for forty days, they rejected God's plan,

and they d for forty years. The consequences were ten times. There's forty

days, So it's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times, right, it

was thousands of times. It was three hundred and sixty five times, right,

because each day was a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so

three hundred and sixty five times right times forty right, right times forty.

Yeah. So so the consequences of going against God's way are unbelievable, even

though the masses were going that way, and we live in a society that

is even more mass hysteria driven then back in that day. Right, And

so one, stop getting your news from every all your friends. Right,

that'd be one. But then just understand, when the whole world is going

a certain way, you need to go the other way. Go the other

way, go God's way. Yeah, and uh, and you know because

two lived, two lived through it, and two eventually made it to the

Promised Land. Joshua and Caleb Caleb from now they're old men instead of young

man, right, and everybody else cost them. They had to wander for

forty years. But yeah, yeah, and then and then all. So

here's another sermon that's in here, which is, sometimes your choices and your

disbelief in God don't just affect you, they affect everybody around you absolutely,

because what happens is is they're the ones the ten persuaded the nation right to

the point to where now the whole crowd is looking to stone Joshua and just

you know, just shut this guy up, because I'm telling you, guys,

if we go in there, we're gonna die, right, And all

of a sudden, you know, they're persuading the crowd, and the crowd

listens to the ten over the two, and then what ends up happening is

everybody suffers. Everybody suffers for the ten's disbelief, right, And so you

know, sometimes like you know, like I don't want to. You know,

my dad's a wonderful human being, you know, but when he divorced

my mom, I don't know back then if he would have thought because I

never asked him, But it wouldn't it have been silly had he have hed

he approached us and said, well, hey, this is my life.

My choice has nothing to do with anybody else. I'm gonna divorce your mom.

Don't tell me what to do. It's my life. He didn't say

any of those things, But wouldn't have been silly for him to think that

that choice divorcing, of divorcing my mom only affected him. Right, I'm

not talking about right or wrong or reconciliation in my mom's situation. I'm not

talking about any of that kind of stuff. Decisions have trickled down effect that

are devastating to the people. Yeah, I'm only I'm only saying it's sometimes

it's silly to think, you know, to claim, hey, it's my

life, it's my happiness, it's my choices. Well, I mean that's

fine, but just recognize it's never just your life, almost never, it's

it's it's it's going to bleed out on other people around you. So we

have to consider that. And you know, society does say, right,

whatever makes you happy, society points it back to you. You know,

we just want you to do what is best for you. We want you

to do well. You know that there's some measure of truth to that.

But we have to realize that, you know, our choices almost always affect

those around us. Yeah. So, so then in chapter fourteen, I'll

finish up with this. Because your men explored the land for forty days,

you must wander in the wilderness for forty years a year, for each day

suffering the consequences of your sin. Then you will discover what it's like to

have me for an enemy. Right, So the people then they change your

mind. They go, oh, god, you're right, we change her

because you know what happens. Right after that, all ten spies were struck

dead right in front of them. So then people, will you know what,

God, we changed your mind, will go. But at that point

God had said no, now you're gonna go spend forty days or forty years

in the wilderness. So thea's no, no, no, we're going to

go in and they were going to go across the river Mos. Whoa,

you can disobey God again. Now he said to go in the wilderness,

and you're gonna You're gonna bring more plagues on us. But Joshua and Caleb,

they chose to go the right way. God spared their lives. God

carried them through that forty years of difficulty, and then He does deliver around

his promises. And so God never promises that it'll be easy. There's no

victory without a fight, right, But God does say, I'll go with

you, I'll for you, I'll protect you, and I will give you

everything I promised that I give you, And so we can always trust God.

Otherwise we set God up as our enemies. Yeah that's good, all

right, Well, hey, we'll see you tomorrow hopefully on the Bible. Gus