The Key Ingredients for Being Loyal to Christ

Sermon Transcript

I must admit to you this afternoon that I’m one of the few dozen people left that still watch those apprentice shows each week. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s just watching people get fired by a guy in a tuxedo that kind of has a twisted attraction for me, but we tape it, and I like to watch.

I like to watch how these job candidates, how they approach these tasks and how they view this whole thing. I find it interesting, too, that every now and then one of these interviewees will accidentally slip in front of the boss and say something about winning the game. Have you ever seen that? And the boss is quick to jump on that and say, “This isn’t a game. This is a Bonafide job interview, and there’s a good paying job at the end of this whole competition, and you’ll get a place in my bazillion dollar corporation or whatever, and you’ll be doing great. This isn’t a game, you know?”

And I think to myself, as I’ve watched people slip up and say that kind of thing and, you know, kind of frustrate the Donald, that, you know what, it’s akin to the kind of forgetfulness, I think, that we have as Christians. I find that a lot of times we as Christians seem to forget that the things that we do down here on earth have lasting consequences in the eternal kingdom in which we’re all headed, to which we’re all headed.

It is something Jesus tried to impress on his followers constantly, that the things that we do here on earth will have lasting and eternal consequences in the kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, Jesus constantly spoke of parables that tried to get people to realize that this time on earth is a stewardship to see how faithful we’re going to be. As a matter of fact, we hear often in passages like Luke chapter 19 that he’ll say to those stewards, he calls them, “Well done, you’ve done really well.” And then he’ll say strange things in his parables like this, “Come and take charge of multiple cities.” That’s a strange thing, multiple cities.

Or the classic line that we all seem to quote in Matthew 25, where Jesus says to those stewards in that parable, he says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Remember that? I find that though we say that, I think we underestimate, we undervalue that, because we often think it’s just a kind of you-done-good certificate that we get to hang on our wall. When in reality, if you read those statements in context, they’re powerful. The consequences that go with it, to the extent to which we’re faithful, it makes all the difference for our dwelling in the bazillion-dollar kingdom of God, if you will. I mean, this is going to matter a lot.

As a matter of fact, before we get to Hebrews chapter 3, it’d be good for us to revisit that passage we so often quote in Matthew chapter 25, where Jesus tells the story about faithfulness. And he puts it in terms of talent, and that’s often confusing because people often think that’s, you know, the ability to speak or play the piano or whatever, when in reality, the talent was an ancient measure of money. And most of you know that, but if you’ve forgotten, you need to know that this is money he’s passing out to these people.

As a matter of fact, a large amount of money. It says in verse number 14 of Matthew 25, as Jesus talks about doing well, which is more than a pat on the head or a little tap on the po-po as we enter the spiritual playground at the end of life. It really has a lot to do with our placement. He says, “It’s like a man going away on a journey who calls his servants in and he entrusts his property to them. And to one he gave five talents of money.”

A talent was about 70 pounds of silver. Does that change things a little bit? 70 pounds. I looked it up this week. Silver’s going this week for $7.80 an ounce. So 70 pounds of silver is about $43,000. So he’s giving these guys $43,680, and to another one he gives two talents, which is about $17,000, and to another he gives one talent, which is about $8,000. And he gives them each one the amount of money according to what his ability is, how he perceives their ability. Then he goes on his journey. And the man who receives five talents, verse 16, at once goes and puts it to work, and he gains five more. That’s a lot. Verse 17, also the one with two talents, he goes and apparently he works two and gains two more.

But the man who’d received one talent, you know the story, he went off, he dug a hole, put it in the ground, and he hid his master’s money. After a long time, the master of those servants returned, and here’s a scary phrase, he settled accounts with them. And often we think of the day of reckoning as a day for non-Christians. You do realize it will also be a day of reckoning for us, a day of accounting. The man who had received, verse 20, the five talents, brought the other five and said, “Master, you entrusted me with five talents. See, I’ve gained five more.”

And the master said, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Does your text have an exclamation point after it? Powerful pass. I mean, it’d be great to hear that, wouldn’t it? You’ve done well. I left you down there as a Christian on earth, and look what you did. You were faithful. You took what I gave you, and you did well with that. And of course, we’re not talking about money here. The analogy is our lives. Are we being faithful with what God gave us? Which, of course, includes money, but it’s a small part of the total package.

But notice that the verse doesn’t end there. There’s another sentence in this verse. He says, “You’ve been faithful with a few things.” Here, put this certificate up in your condo in the kingdom so that you can always remember you did really well down there on earth. Underline that. Do you see that there? Is that what he says?

No. He doesn’t say you get a plaque or you get a little extra crown or there’s another little sparkly jewel in your outfit. What does he say? “I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.” Oh, you get to go to the spiritual playground, if you will, and everything is going to be great, but notice what you get based on your faithfulness. You get to get in charge of a lot of things.

The man with two talents didn’t have as much entrusted to him, but what he had entrusted to him, man, he multiplied it. He was one who was a good and faithful servant. He gained two more. His master said the same thing. “Well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.”

Then the passage gets real sad because you know what happens next, and that’s in two weeks we’ll discuss that more on that later. But notice the distinction that the eternal placement in the kingdom is based on the faithfulness of the steward. And oftentimes when we long to hear Christ at the end of this earthly trek say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” it’s not just a pat on the head. It’s a determination of where we will be in the kingdom. And what is clear, though the details aren’t all that clear because it’s a bizarre reality, it is. It seems to be for us. We at least know this: to be entrusted with more is good because the better we do with this thing and the more faithful we are in this journey, the more God is going to bless us in the kingdom to come.

Now, a lot of people take that and say, “Well, that sounds so, you know, like such an earthly and fleshly, a carnal motivation.” You know what? It’s the motivation Jesus puts in front of us all the time. Have you notice that? He’s always saying this. So do good. Be faithful.

Hebrews chapter 3 is a passage about faithfulness. Our faithfulness is important. How you are faithful in the Christian life will determine tons for you. And a thousand years from now, if you don’t believe me, come up and talk to me about it. Because we can chat about whether or not our life on earth and the faithfulness of that life had anything to do with our reality a thousand years from now. I guarantee you, it will make a big, big difference.

And in this text, he says you need to be faithful. As a matter of fact, we’ve heard about the fact that Moses was faithful and Christ, of course, was the ultimate faithful one. But in the bottom of verse 6, the scripture says we need to be faithful too.

And then to motivate us to be faithful, this is the tact of the writer of Hebrews, he gives us a bad example, which for a lot of us, I suppose, we can connect with, especially as younger siblings. Did you have an older brother or sister? I like to call it the vicarious learning through big brother. You watch what happens and goes wrong there. We see how he negotiates the parents, and I watch what doesn’t work, and I realize this isn’t good. Don’t go down that road.

And Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10, if we could just learn from the Old Testament examples, we’ll be so far ahead of the game. So while this is a negative text, starting in verse 7 going through verse 11, you need to realize watching big brother mess up bad sure helps us if we’re attuned to learn from it as to how we ought to live the Christian life.

And so the writer of Hebrews says, you better not do what they did. And note what they did. There’s a lot to learn here. As a matter of fact, we see in verses 7 through 11, the key ingredients for obedience. All we need to do is flip it upside down. And we see where they went wrong, and we can see what we can do to be careful to sure up these virtues in our lives so that at the end of the road, we can not only hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” but we can hear Christ say, “I want to entrust you with a lot of great things here in the kingdom.”

Verse number seven. “So as the Holy Spirit says,” and you might want to put in the margin if it’s not already there, this is a quotation of Psalm 95, which is attributed over in the next chapter to David. So this is about the 10th century BC, David writing and commenting on what took place about 400 years earlier, when out of Egypt, these people came and were faced with a crossroads and proved to be unfaithful.

He says, “You know what? Today, if you’d hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts, as they did in the rebellion during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers, your patriarchs, your foregoers, they tested and tried me,” God says, “for 40 years, they saw what I did, and they were still trying me. That’s why I was angry with that generation and I said their hearts are always going astray and they have not known my ways. So I declared on oath in my anger they shall never enter my rest.”

And you know the story, right? Do you know it all came down to a critical choice though in Numbers chapter 14. It was the crossroad and it was where they were tested, though the text talks about the fact that that test ended up testing God’s patience. They were being put to the test to see whether or not they would prove to be faithful. And they failed the test.

And the scripture is saying to us, listen, don’t do the same thing. And note where he starts. It’s all about being attentive and receptive and responsive to the voice of God. Look at it again, verse number 7. The Holy Spirit said, not only the 10th century BC, but it says it to us as well, that if we would hear God’s voice, don’t harden your hearts, as they did, interesting commentary, in the rebellion. When they rebelled against God, they were not faithful, because there was something wrong with the way they heard God’s instructions. If you’re taking notes and you found the worksheet, jot this down, number one on your outlines.

You and I, key ingredient number one, if we’re going to be faithful to God, we have to not only follow His instructions, it’s predicated on listening carefully and receptively to His instructions. I put it this way, you and I, we need to be receptive to God’s words. We have to be receptive to them.

And we have to say we’re here to follow your instructions. And if we’re here to follow your instructions, which is what faithfulness is, we need to be careful to listen to what you’ve said. And that really was the problem. Hard-heartedness toward the voice of God.

Turn back with me and take a look at this historical circumstance in Numbers chapter 14. And to get a little context, we ought to go to Numbers 13, the chapter right in front of it, where they were put up to a place, and don’t ever forget this city, this little town. It was this little town on the outskirts of the desert. It was a town called Kadesh Barnea. That’s a fun one to say. Kadesh Barnea.

You want to say it, don’t you? Say it. Kadesh Barnea. Because you know what? You’ll face a lot of Kadesh Barneas in your life. And you need to remember Numbers 13 and 14 the next time you hit a crossroad like this. And it may not be as dramatic. It may be a small Kadesh Barnea, but you’re going to run into a Kadesh Barnea, which is a place right at the front of two paths. One goes into the promised land, and one goes to Blythe, right? Goes into the desert. Sorry. I love to pick on Blythe. It goes right into the desert.

And how long did they stay there? We just read it in the text. You know it from Sunday school. How long? 40 years. That was a long detour. And if you want to avoid the detours, if you want God to look at our lives and say, those guys are faithful to me, then you need to be able to successfully navigate Kadesh Barnea. And that’s what they weren’t able to do in this text.

And you know a little bit of the story. If not, let’s review it up in verse number one of chapter 13. Yahweh says to Moses, “Send some men in to explore the land of Canaan.” Now underline this, “which I am giving to the Israelites.” Was there any doubt in God’s mind? No. He was there. You’re in. This is your place. It’s all ready for you to go. “And so from each ancestral tribe,” there are 12 tribes of Israel, “send one of its leaders.” So at Yahweh’s command, Moses sent them out from the desert of Paran, and all of them were leaders of the Israelites. Verse 4 talks about their names, and he starts with the tribe of Reuben, and he goes right on down.

Two noteworthy people in this list, as you scan through those verses, are Caleb from the tribe of Judah, and Hoshia from the tribe of Ephraim, who would later be renamed, what was his name going to be? Joshua. Hoshia means salvation in Hebrew. Joshua means Yahweh saves in Hebrew. So they changed his name to be very specific. Salvation is just not abstract. Salvation comes from Yahweh. But Joshua and Caleb are a part of this 12-person band to go in and spy out the land. Now, what you need to know before we read anything else in Numbers, keep your finger here and go with me to the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter 23.

When God says to Moses, listen, you guys are going to take this land. I’ve given it to you. This was not something that God didn’t elaborate on. He elaborated on it. Matter of fact you could go back where we went last week in the third chapter of Exodus and see that God said to Moses from the day he called him at the burning bush, “I’m going to give you the land that I swore on oath to your forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I’m going to give you the land and I want you to lead the people into the land.”

So we knew from the outset that’s what this was all about. Going with this group from Egypt to the to the land of Canaan. But along the way, as we started to get all the people out of Egypt in the Exodus, that’s what Exodus means, an exit, they all left Egypt. And as they were heading up to the crossroads of Kadesh Barnea, God had made them promises like this in Exodus 23. Drop down to verse number 20. He makes specific promises like this: “I am sending an angel ahead of you.” Now, this is a great word. Circle it. “To guard you along the way.” He’s going to guard you. He’ll take care of you. “And to bring you into the place that I have prepared.”

“Now pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Don’t rebel against him. He’s not going to forgive your rebellion since my name is in him. But if you listen carefully to what he says and you do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and I will oppose those who oppose you. My angel will go ahead of you and he will bring you into the land of the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Canaanite, the Hivite, the Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.” They will go away and they will just vacate. You will route them and you will walk into the promised land. So they had this ringing in their ears. Not only did God say, “I’ve given you this land.” He said, “If you run into any problems there, I’ll take care of you. I will protect you. You don’t have any problems. I’ve got the angel that’s going to go ahead of you. And if there’s any enemies or any hard hills to conquer, he will help you conquer them. That’s my promise to you.”

Back to Numbers 13. Actually, let’s go to the end of chapter 13. Numbers 13, verse 26. Everybody comes back. You remember this from your flannel graph days. There they are coming in with the big grapes from verses 21 through 24, the cluster of grapes. Remember that? Big old cluster. They got them on a stick and they’re coming back. Look at this great place.

Verse 26, they came back to Moses and Aaron while the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the desert of Paran. There they reported to them and the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow, quote-unquote, with milk and honey. Man, it’s great. Here’s some of the fruit. This is a prosperous, fertile land. This is a great place. We want to live here.

But,” verse 26—no, I’m sorry, verse 28—that’s a bad word most of the time, right? This is not good. I mean, it’s a great thing. It would be great to go there. And I know God told us to go there, but we’ve got a little problem. “Moses, the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and the cities are really large. We even saw the descendants of Anak there,” whoever they are, apparently some powerful people. “The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.” And they’re starting to complain, and the whole thing’s starting to take a dive, and Caleb speaks up and he silences the people. Verse 30, before Moses, and he said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

Guess what’s ringing in his mind? Exodus 23, right? God’s going to help us. Oh, it may be hard. We can do it. God’s promised it to us. God said he’ll send his angel, and God would make the enemies of our lives his enemies. No problem. With God on your team, we can do this.

But there’s that word again, verse 31. The men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people. Look at their muscles. Look how big they are. Their spears are really long and their arrows are sharp. They’re stronger than us.” They’ve spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land that they had explored. And they said, “The land we explored devours those living in it and all the people we saw there were of great size, really big, and the Nephilim were there. The descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim, whoever they are, big people. Picture Andre the Giant or Shaq or somebody. “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and by the way, that’s the way we look to them too.”

Chapter 14, verse 1. That night all the people of the community said, “Thuy, we’re not going to believe that bad report. We trust God. God said we should take the land. We’re going to take the land.” It’s not what happened. They cried. They wept. And all the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt or in this desert. Why is Yahweh bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and our children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” And they said to one another, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”

Then Moses and Aaron fell face down in front of the whole Israelite assembly gathered there. And Joshua, son of Nun, and Caleb, son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had explored the land, tore their clothes, the ancient Near Eastern sign of mourning and despair. And they said to the entire Israelite community, “The land we passed through and explored was exceedingly good, is exceedingly good. And if Yahweh is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but Yahweh is with us. Do not be afraid of them.” But the whole assembly talked about stoning them. There’s a good response to your sermon, right?

Then the glory of Yahweh appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites. And Yahweh said to Moses, “How long will these people treat you with contempt?” Is that what it says? Me with contempt. Why? Because Exodus 23, because Exodus chapter 3, because God had said, Numbers 13 verse 1, he was going to give them this land. And they’re going, “No, I don’t think so.” “How long will they treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them?” I’ve given them so much. I’ve shown them my faithfulness, and they can’t be faithful to me.

Diagnosis. Back to Hebrews chapter 3. You know what the diagnosis was? Hard heart. Verse 7: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” That’s what the Israelites did in the rebellion. Their hearts got hard. They heard the word of God, but they listened to it, and then they saw their circumstances, and they said, “I choose the circumstances.”

Look at the things that derailed them, would you? I mean, there are three things clearly in this text. It was hard. The people are big. It was scary. They’re going to route us out of the land. And you know what? If we fight these people and it’s not just a landslide, if there’s any question about it, it’s going to be hard for us. It’s going to hurt. There’s going to be pain involved.

If you want to inverse this, what hardens the heart? Okay, I don’t want to stretch this too far, but the things that hardened the hearts of those people in the desert at Kadesh Barnea were their desire for ease, comfort, and security. And they said, “I’d rather be back in Egypt because that’s more secure, that’s more comfortable. That’ll be a better place for us. It’s not as hard.” Starting to get convicting yet?

To be faithful, we’ve got to have faith in a God who, when we look at obeying his voice and doing what he says, we are willing to give up the comfort and conveniences that our flesh so desires. To be receptive to his word is to say, “I will do what you say regardless of what it costs me, and even if it’s difficult.”

We spent Thursday nights talking about the gospel the last couple of weeks. We talk about how we’re representatives of the gospel. We’ve heard the word of God on Thursday nights. Now we’ve got a choice to make. And every day we’re at a small Kadesh Barnea. What am I going to do? Am I going to do what the Scripture says and represent the truth of the gospel? Or am I going to look at the fact that this is hard? It may cost me. It may hurt. And so I say, “Well, I’m not going to do that.” You know what God would call that? Unfaithfulness.

Every week we study the Scripture. Every morning you may be in the habit of getting up and opening up God’s word. And the Scripture says you might fall into a certain kind of self-deception because you think knowing God’s word and studying God’s word is what it’s all about. And the Bible says that’s not it. It’s to drive us to be doers of the word and not hearers only, who deceive ourselves.

And so the question for us is, are we receptive to God’s word? And what that means is, are we really ready to do it? Are we listening to God saying, “God, did you say go into the land? Okay, I’m going.” It’s a responsiveness. It’s a kind of receptivity. It is, as we often quote in 1 Thessalonians, a welcoming of the word, not as the word of men, but as the word of God, because that’s what it is.

God’s word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And when we open it up and it says, “Here’s how you ought to respond to marital difficulty,” and we say, “Wow, that looks like it’s going to take me down a narrow path. I don’t think I want to do that,” then we’ve just been at Kadesh Barnea and we walked into the desert. And we have a choice. Every day there’s at least one Kadesh Barnea we’re faced with. And God is saying, “Listen to my voice. Listen to my words. Don’t harden your heart against my instructions.”

It’s funny to watch those apprentice shows, and when they get up there and they give the instructions at the beginning—if you’re still one of the twelve people that’s watching those shows—watch what they do. You know what they do? They pull out their little pads of paper and their pens. Do you notice that? They want to get it. “What do they want us to do? What do we have to do?” You know what that is? That’s a receptivity to the instructions.

And you know what? They take copious notes listening to Trump and Martha Stewart, okay? And God, the boss of the universe—the word for it in the Bible is Lord of the universe—is speaking to us every day in the Scriptures, every Thursday night, every Sunday afternoon at church, and he’s speaking to us, and we ought to be taking copious notes. We ought to be saying, “God, tell me, what is it that you want me to do?”

Because every time we face the Kadesh Barnea of life, he’s saying, “Are you going to show yourself to be trusting, receptive to my word, or are you going to flake out?” That’s what the Israelites did. They were scared. It was too hard. It may cost. It may hurt.

The fundamental ingredient of faithfulness is a receptivity to the instructions of God. I mean, that’s what it gets down to. And that means we’re people of the book. We talk about the Bible being central at Compass Bible Church, and it isn’t because we just want to be knowledgeable, be able to answer all the Bible trivia questions at the parties or whatever. Why? Because we cannot be faithful to God unless we are attentive to his instructions.

And so we’ve got to be people with Scriptures. We’ve got to listen to it with a receptive heart. It’s a blank-check mentality. I often like to say, I’m going to God and I’m saying, “God, what is it that you want me to do? I’ve already signed the check. I’m committed to being on board. I’ll do it.” Be receptive to the words of God. Don’t have a hard heart like they did in the rebellion.

To them, it was a lot of good advice. Think about it. Do you think the guys that were standing up saying, “I don’t think we should go in there and take this land”—do you think they were persuasive? I think they were persuasive. Do you think they had maybe, you know, little Bibles in their back pocket? Are you tracking with me? They didn’t have back pockets, I realize, but you understand what I’m saying.

They had a sense of saying, “You know what? This is prudent. This makes sense. You don’t want to go in there and orphan your children, do you?” It just doesn’t seem reasonable. The walk of faith and obeying God’s instructions will often feel like that leap. It’ll feel like a risk. And we just got to be ready for it. Say, “God, that’s what it’s all about, to be listening to you.” To have a “Well done, good and faithful servant” at the end of this trek is to be receptive to your words. So we lean on it. We live on it. We survive on the instructions of God.

Now, I split verse eight in half because he then turns it around and says it wasn’t just your rebellion. You did something to me, God says. Look what he says in verse number 8: “during the time of testing in the desert.” And a lot of commentators initially, or a lot of Bible students, they read that first part and they say, “Well, that means that God was testing them.” And in a way he was, but that’s not what this is referring to. Because he turns around and uses the same word in verse number 9, and he says, “where your fathers tested and tried me.” Tested who? Me, God says. And for forty years they saw what I did, and they were still testing and trying me.

What’s interesting is the object turns around. The object at first was you had a problem, and your problem was you weren’t receptive to my words. Your heart was hard against my instructions. But then he says, what you guys were doing there at Kadesh Barnea is you were testing me. You were trying my patience.

And that next word there, “tried me,” is the concept in the word of trying to see if I really meant it or not. You were putting me to the test to see whether or not I really meant what I said. You were testing my patience, and you were trying my integrity and my character. I mean, I said I’d protect you, and basically you were like, “Well, I don’t think so.” He said, “You know what? That’s what you did to me.” And the response of that, verse number 10, is that it invoked God’s anger. Look at verse 10: “That is why I was angry with that generation. And I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’” The focus here is on God.

So how do we turn this around? If I’m never to be at Kadesh Barnea and walk into the desert, if I’m going to be faithful to choose the promised land over the desert path, if I’m going to be someone who at the end of the road sees a “Well done” from God and he looks at my life and he says, “Look at how you took the path of obedience and faithfulness over and against security and comfort and ease,” what do I have to do? I have to give some attention to God in this. I’ve got to give some thought and sensitivity to how God is going to react. Now, this is a strange statement. You may have never written this out before, but jot this down. You and I, note this: we need to be sensitive to God’s feelings. Because these are feeling words here. You and I need to be sensitive to God’s feelings.

You do understand that he’s not a force, right? You know he’s not a computer program. He’s not just some strange abstract thing. God is a person. The only reason you have feelings is because God created you in his image with feelings. Are you tracking with that? That’s the only reason you know what it is to get mad. Because God—half the time that the word “anger” shows up in the Bible, it’s attributed to God. God gets angry. That’s why you know what it is to experience anger. And anger feels great, doesn’t it? It feels awful. It’s terrible.

The words are interesting that are used to describe anger in the Bible. Heat is one of them. And we even say today, “The person got hot,” right? They’re so mad. They’re hot. They’re angry-hot. God says, “When you did that to me, it brought anger to my life. When you looked at what I asked you to do and my instructions and you didn’t do them, I got mad.” And all I’m saying is you and I have got to realize this: you have the opportunity at your small Kadesh Barnea on Thursday afternoon or Monday morning to determine the feelings of God. Think about that. You can adjust his feelings on Thursday. How? Monday morning choices will affect God’s attitude, his disposition.

Turn back with me, if you would, to Numbers chapter 14. Look at the end of the chapter when he says this about the whole thing. Here’s his response. Now, I know these aren’t great words to read, and you probably don’t want to crochet them into a pillow for your couch, and they’re never going to make it on a DaySpring greeting card, but they’re important for us to realize, again in light of 1 Corinthians 10, because these people made God mad, and I want to avoid it if I possibly can.

Numbers chapter 14. Just look at it one more time. Yahweh says to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt?” Have you ever been treated with contempt before? How’s that feel? Feels good? No, it feels terrible. God says, “This is how you treat me.”

“They refuse to believe in me.” Ever had anybody do that to you? Yeah. Feel good? No, it feels terrible. In spite of all the miraculous signs I performed among them.” Look at God feeling ripped off right now. And I framed it that way earlier. He had been so faithful to them, and he says, “Look, you’re not even able to be faithful to me.”

“I have suspended natural law to show you how much I’ll take care of you. I have put Weber’s bread on the front lawn for you every day.” Think about that. We’ve already had the quail episode. He’s bringing sandwiches out of clouds for these people to eat. And he says, “I’m doing that for you just to show you I will take care of you. And now you look at a little bit of a tall mountain with guys with big biceps, and now all of a sudden you’re afraid? What’s wrong with you? Look at what I’ve done for you.” God’s hurt by this. God’s angered by this.

As long as you’re in the Old Testament, you’re not far from the book of Exodus. Turn back a couple books to Exodus 34. And praise God, as we talk about God’s anger here, praise God that he is not quick to anger. The Bible says God is slow to anger. But you know, even in the admission that God—one of the virtues of God, one of the attributes of God—is that he’s slow to anger, you know what that does certainly include? He’ll get angry. He’s just slow to get there. But praise God, his bent isn’t to be quick to anger in our lives. But we can make him angry, depending on how we handle Kadesh Barnea this week.

Exodus 34. Look at verse number 5. Yahweh came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, Yahweh. He passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “Yahweh, Yahweh, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.” Oh, he loves to do that. That’s his nature.

“Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.” And if people are going to be hard-hearted and if people are going to provoke the Lord, he’s going to punish them. As a matter of fact, the children and their children are going to experience the wake effect in the lives of the parents to the sin of the fathers, it says, to the third and fourth generation.

I’ve often given the illustration about Dad. I don’t know if your dad was like mine, but you could provoke Dad and a lot of times he’d sit there on the couch and you could push and push and push and push. And he may be slow to anger, but at some point he gets up off the couch. Then it’s never good, right?

 

But it’s not like God is some kind of hair-trigger just waiting to go off. He’s some big heavenly bazooka that just wants to blow your head off this week if you step down the path of the desert. That’s not it. Man, God is slow to anger. He is abounding in love. He’s quick to forgive.

But you’ve got to know he does get angry. And just because he’s slow to anger doesn’t mean you and I can’t make him mad this week. And therefore I want to ask the question at every crossroad in my life and every decision I make: how’s this going to make God feel? How’s God going to respond to this? And we’re just looking at one word here in Hebrews chapter 3—his anger. We test him. We provoke him. And he eventually gets angry.

But you know, there’s more than just anger. Go back to Hebrews chapter 3, if you would. Bouncing you around a lot, I’m sorry, but take a look at Hebrews 3 again. Not only can we make God angry, which is certainly a feeling that he feels—and though the word isn’t here, Ephesians 4:30 is a good cross-reference—we can also grieve him, which is more of a sadness than an anger. God not only feels anger; he feels heartbroken.

And look at the phrases in Hebrews chapter 3 that seem to connect with that thought. It says in verse number 10, “I was angry with that generation, and I said…” Now look at this. This is a statement that makes us feel just a compassion and empathy for God: “Their hearts are always going astray.”

Could you imagine if a guy came up to you in the lobby on the way out and said, “Hey, I just got to talk to you for a minute. I’m just kind of broken up inside. My wife’s heart is always going astray from me.” How would you feel about that? I mean, your heart would break for that person. You would empathize. “You’re kidding me.” “No, her heart is always going astray. She’s just not faithful to me.” Wow. Pain.

Or how about the next line: “They have not known my ways.” Maybe it’s a parent down on the patio who says, “Hey, I just got to talk to you, man. I’ve got a sixteen-year-old son, and everything he does is contrary to the values of our family. It’s like he doesn’t even know the path that we raised him in. He doesn’t know our ways. We taught him to be honest, and he’s totally dishonest. We taught him to keep the rules, and he’s totally breaking the law, and he’s down in juvenile hall right now. I can’t believe where my sixteen-year-old is right now. He’s out of control. He doesn’t know our ways.” There’s emotion in that, is there not?

Ephesians 4:30 says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” Don’t grieve him. It breaks his heart when you stand at Kadesh Barnea and say, “I think God’s instructions are too hard. I think God’s instructions are too scary. I think God’s instructions may cost me too much pain.”

At the outset of the Christian life, God talked about those things. And he said, “Man, that’s going to be part of the deal. You take up your cross and you follow me wherever I lead you.” It doesn’t matter what the next guy’s path is like. Remember, we talked about Peter and John and that whole discussion in the end of the book of John. It’s not about what the other guy’s going through. It’s about are you going to be obedient to walk the path he’s called you to? And when you and I stutter-step after God, all that God has invested in us is hurtful. We ought to be sensitive to God’s feelings.

That’s a hard concept for you? Just try to get past that. Because I think if you hired me—here’s a bizarre illustration—you hired me to come paint your living room, which is not going to happen, by the way. But you said, “Hey, Mike, I want you to paint this, and I’m going to pay you a great wage. Here’s what I’m going to pay you. And here’s the color I picked out. Here’s a little swatch from the paint store. This is what I want.” So you go off to work. You give me a good eight or nine hours in the house all by myself. And you come home, and there I am, sitting on your couch. Pizza boxes empty everywhere. How would you feel? “Well, man, that’s not right. I told you what to do. I told you I’d take care of you. I told you I’d reward you for it, and you didn’t do it.” You say, “Okay, yeah, you’re right.” So next day I show up, seven o’clock, ready to go. Got my painter outfit on. You say, “Okay, Mike, let’s paint it now.” You go away for eight or nine hours. You come home, I’ve got all my friends over, I’m watching on your plasma the basketball game. Wall’s still the same color. Still needs painting. Nothing. How do you feel? Feeling worse now, aren’t you? Day three. You give me the pep talk. “Listen, man, you’ve got to paint this. I’m going to reward you well. I’m just giving you another chance.” So I say, “Okay, I’m going to do it. I’m going to pick up a paintbrush today. I promise.”

So off you go. Nine or ten hours later you come back. Room’s painted a totally different color than you want. I say, “You know what? I didn’t really like the color you picked out. Talked to my friends who were over for the game yesterday. They didn’t think it was a good color. So we picked a different color.” You might feel grief. You might feel anger, I’m thinking. Disappointment. You may be slow to anger. You may be totally for me. You may want Pastor Mike to do a great job painting your house. But eventually your heart’s going to be frustrated or angry, maybe heartbroken and furious at the same time.

Every day God puts before us opportunities to hear his voice, to do what he says. You’ve just got to know you and I both have an effect on God’s heart. Be sensitive to his feelings this week. You want to be faithful to God? You’ve got to be receptive to his words. You’ve got to be sensitive to his feelings. Thirdly, verse 11, Hebrews 3:11 says, “So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”

Jot down in the margin Numbers chapter 14, verses 26 through 35, which are probably too painful for us to read. But God, in that one statement in Hebrews 3, is summarizing his slow-to-anger response to disobedient people. And he sends them into the desert for forty years.

Do you know why he sent them into the desert for forty years? Because they spied out the good land for forty days. And God’s response was, “For every day that you spied out the good land that I promised to give you, and you came back and turned it down, you get one year for every day.” After forty days of spying out the land, they got forty years in the desert.

And he says, “Your children that you were afraid would be taken into captivity—they’re going to be the ones marching through the gates of the promised land, and you don’t get to go with them. And your bodies will drop in the desert.” Now, I wish I could say after Numbers 14:26–35 Israel learned their lesson. And you know what? They never disobeyed God’s voice again. But is that what happened, Old Testament students? Not even close.

Two chapters later there’s this little thing called the rebellion of Korah. Remember him? Two chapters later. Then you had that whole Balaam fiasco a couple chapters down the road. And it ends up that the entire nation starts to fall to idolatry by the end of the book of Numbers. What’s going on with these people? They didn’t learn their lesson. They encountered God’s discipline, and they were not responsive to it. And just like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, we’ve got to learn our lesson from that.

I put it this way, number three: we need to be responsive to God’s discipline.

And I know for a culture like ours and a world like ours, this may seem really bizarre and mystical to you, but the painful experiences that you have in your life—some of them are a direct result of your Kadesh Barnea failure. Exactly, a direct result. I didn’t say that. Hebrews chapter 12 says that, as clear as any passage in the Scripture.

Take a look at it with me. Hebrews chapter 12. It says that you will be going along and tooling along and everything will be fine, and then all of a sudden—desert, pain. And God wants you to say, “Hey, wait a minute. Maybe I’m being spanked right now.”

Hebrews 12, verse 4: “In your struggle against sin…” which, by the way, is a statement about a struggle to be faithful. You can invert that. That’s what we’re talking about. “In your struggle to be faithful, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” And I think most of us could say, “That’s probably true about me.”

He says, “Oh, you’re working hard to be faithful, huh? How hard are you working? How painful has it gotten? How uncomfortable has it been? How costly has this path of faithfulness been? I bet you haven’t bled over it, have you?” No. You’re right, God, we haven’t.

“And have you forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons? ‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes”—circle that word—“he scourges”—how about this, a whippin’. That’s what it is. “He gives a whippin’ to every son he accepts.”

You may not believe in spanking—I say this all the time—but God does. “Endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?” Well, this obviously wasn’t written in the twenty-first century. “But if you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.”

The good thing about the desert experience that we have as a result of our sin is it reminds us that God is our Father. “Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live?” “Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.” You can just call it faithfulness.

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.” It may not be the desert for you where your kids are wandering through the wilderness, but it could be this: it’s not pleasant; it’s painful. Have you experienced times like that in your life? Sometimes it’s all about growth. Sometimes it’s totally cause and effect. Sometimes, though, it’s God’s discipline. It’s a post–Kadesh Barnea experience. But here’s the good news: “Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

Here’s the problem with the whole Old Testament Numbers 14 through 25 experience: they didn’t learn from it. They were not trained by it. And our job is to be responsive to God’s discipline because they weren’t. “Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.”

Picture that in light of Kadesh Barnea. There they were: “I’m afraid of walking into the promised land.” Strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees. “I’d be happy to fix you guys,” God says. “I’d be happy to take you through this little discipline time, but you’ve got to be responsive to discipline.” Well, what’s that look like? It’s not hard to figure out. Just tell me how you want your kids to respond to you when you discipline them. How do you want them to respond? That’s all God’s looking for. What do we want from our kids? We want them to fess up, do we not? Own it, man. Own it. You did it. Own it.

And a lot of us try to get through our discipline and we say things like, “Well, I’ll just try to do better next time.” And we never own the sin that brought us into the desert in the first place. We want them to agree that what they did was wrong. Don’t you want that from the heart of your child? “That was wrong. I should not have done it.” That, by the way, in the Bible is called confession—to agree with God that our sin was wrong. We hope that they’ll respond quickly in doing what’s right next time.

I had to discipline both of my sons last night. I told them, “Listen, I’m going to let you do stuff Mom would never let you do, so go do it.” But I said, “When the clock strikes seven, you’re coming inside.” So guess what? It’s 7:05. I go out and say, “All right, kids, come on. Let’s get in.” I turned and walked to the door with faith that they would be right behind me. They were not. So I marched back out. “All right, kids, upstairs. It’s time for discipline.” We handled it biblically, appropriately, under control. Tears done. Finished. Hug. We’re all fine now, right? And here’s what happened. The rest of the night, when I told them to do something like, “Get your pajamas on,” guess what? They ran to do it. That’s what God wants from us—a responsiveness to discipline. “I want you to do what I say.”

I grew up in Long Beach where all the streets are parallel or perpendicular. Then I moved to South Orange County. I don’t know what the city planners were thinking. You could be on a road down here and be going the opposite direction in about five minutes. So here’s what I’ve learned about South Orange County: you need a map. In Long Beach, you could kind of sense your direction by the sun or the landmark in the distance. Out here, forget it. You need a map.

And here’s the thing: every intersection is Kadesh Barnea. Every intersection. And you and I have a choice. And you’re not going to do it on your intuition. That’s why you and I need to be people of the book. We’ve got to pull out the map and say, “God, which way do I go?” And if you take the wrong path, guess what? God will make sure that you feel it. You’ll know. Turn your car around. Go back to the intersection and go the other way. Map in hand. God’s just looking for you to get to the destination so he can say to you, “Well done.”

Is he looking for perfection? There’s only one person that’s perfect. But he sure expects us to do better at every intersection. Let’s make sure we work hard at it this week. And the way you’re going to do it is to be receptive to his words, sensitive to his feelings, and responsive to his discipline.

Let’s pray. God, help us as people who need so desperately to pay attention to what you say. In a culture, in a world where it just seems like everybody wants to wing it, help us to be people of your word. We can pick up your Bible today and hear what you have to say. You tell us in black and white how to run our business, how to relate to our friends, how to have a good marriage, how to raise our children, how to think, how to act, how to speak.

Your word is very clear, and it’s been tested and tried for centuries and generations. And God, today it seems a lot of us are living in a land that just ignores it.

So help us to pick up the map and say at every turn, at every crossroad, at every decision this week, we want to be receptive to your words, sensitive to your feelings. And if we make a wrong choice, we want to turn around quickly and be responsive to your discipline.

Help us to do that, I pray, with a kind of efficiency and effectiveness that we’ve never seen before in our Christian life. In Jesus’ name, amen.