Welcome to the River Mountain Church Preaching Library. It is our prayer, and indeed our hope, that this message might inspire your life. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the preaching of God's Word. Well, we are continuing in our study in the book of Exodus, and today we're going to look at how to be friends with God. My heart would be that every single person in here would desire to have a closer friendship with God. not just looking at God as God, because he is God, but looking at him as you would your closest and best friend, and to treat him in a way that you would never want to violate that friendship in any way. The Bible tells us that the only way two people can walk together is if they agree. And if you want to be friends with God, you have to agree with God. You cannot be in disagreement with God and walk with God. And that includes everything that is in his word. That includes everything that his spirit directs you to do. All of these things are about keeping that friendship with God intact. But the greatest enemy of friendship with God is friendship with this world. The Bible says in 1 John 2.15, And just to make that abundantly clear, what we're talking about here, is that friendship with God involves loyalty to God and a sense of disloyalty or dislike or disobedience to the things that are in the world. And what we see in the book of Exodus is people trying to get into a friendship with God In Exodus, the rest of the book, and through Numbers 9, we see there's an emphasis on what God likes, what God wants, what God dislikes. We see a meeting place in which the people can come and meet with God. He has times of celebration. There's feasts in the winter, spring, fall. They're all set out here in Exodus from the rest of Exodus to Numbers. And then finally, he says to them, although you have the law, on one hand, you have it written in stone, you have the books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, I am still going to require you to follow my spirit. And you will follow my spirit in the daytime by a cloud of smoke, and then in the nighttime, you will follow it with fire. And so these are the lessons of the Christian life. There are laws to obey, there's a priority on meeting with God, there are feasts of celebration, but we have to learn how to follow the Spirit. So the second year of their journey, and two months into it, God finally says, okay, you've been at Sinai camping out, I've laid all this out to you, I've laid the whole program out to you, now it's time for you to follow the Spirit. So here's what happens, and this is Numbers 9, and this is where you pick up the story, this is Numbers 9.20. Sometimes the cloud was a few days over the tabernacle according to the command of the Lord, they remained in the camp. In other words, the cloud was there, they remained there. How many of you are petrified, I mean absolutely petrified, of going someplace where God did not tell you to go? Or doing something God did not tell you to do? My wife and I are getting ready to go on vacation. And one of the questions I've been asking my Lord, Lord, did we plan this or are you directing us and is this your plan? Because I am petrified to go anywhere where the Lord does not command. And friendship with God is one in which you are always trying to stay close to him. You're always in touch with him. You're always asking questions. Lord, is this your will? Lord, is this not your will? And now that may sound hyper-paranoid and you may think, well, I like what Luther said, just get your heart right and do whatever you wanna do. But I wanna tell you, there's more to it than that. There is a spirit to follow the same way they had clouds and they had fire, we have a spirit who is leading us. And it says, at the command of the Lord, they camped. but were also told at the command of the Lord, when he commanded them to go, they went. So finally, after being in Sinai for roughly about a year, in the second year of that second month, on the 12th day of the month, the cloud lifted from the tabernacle of the testimony and the people of Israel. They set out by stages from the wilderness of Sinai, and the cloud settled down in the wilderness of Paran. So now, finally, God says, it's time to move, follow. And they all begin to follow. And in their following, we find out that God is still testing them, still pruning them, still showing them. There's a lot of Egypt still in them. He took them out of Egypt in a day. It's going to take a long time, but hopefully not too long. They're only two years in. And so here they go from Sinai, and they're going to go up here. And here's the wilderness of Paran, and they're going to begin getting more and more tests. Now they're on their way to which is the Holy Land, I mean to the Promised Land, which is up here a little further. But here are some huge, big tests, and they are tests of loyalty, and they are tests of whether you will follow your own passions, your own desires, or will you be such a friend of God that the only thing that matters is doing what He wants. So let's get back to this idea of you can't be friends with the world, and you can't be friends with God. Because in 1 John 2.16, he gets into very specific things of what it means to be a friend of the world. what it means to be worldly. And here he says, for all the things that are in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. This is not from the Father, but this is from the world. People who follow their flesh, people who follow their eyes, people who have the pride of life, they are friends with the world. You must not, cannot, should not have any friendship like that. The world is passing away along with all of its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. It's all about this. Whoever does the will of God. Not the desires of your flesh, not the desires of your eyes, not the pride of life, but the will of God. If you're a friend of God, you will care most about his will. Matter of fact, I will go as far to say it is the only thing you care about. But let's talk about being a friend with the world by following the desires of your flesh. There it is. Friendship with the world makes you an enemy with God. Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of this world makes himself an enemy of God. So this is what they're going to be tested on. Bodily appetites, desires for your flesh over and above your desire for God. So how does that manifest in the Exodus story? Does anybody remember the Exodus story in the way of the specific desires of their flesh? Well, that's why I'm here. What was that test? And here it is. Israel had a diet. How many people are on a diet? Or anybody on a diet? This was a forced diet. God gave them manna that fell from heaven, and manna did not taste very good. It tasted like a dried up piece of cardboard with a little bit of honey on it. It just wasn't the kind of thing that would stimulate your taste buds. But it was God's will. It's what God provided. It was God's food. It was the food he wanted them to eat. And eventually they get to this point where they're like, You ever wonder where the word ramble comes from? The rubble or the ramble? Rebel? Rabble. I said rabble. I said everything but the word. I said everything but the word rabble. That's my dyslexia and my ADD combined in one great blunder. Okay. The rabble. I said it right that time, didn't I? Okay. Very good. They had strong cravings. Strong cravings. The people of Israel wept again and said, oh, that we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing. It was free, man. And that's the way the Egyptians were. They wanted you to work hard, but they fed you good. So even though they were slaves, they got fed good. They had cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions. They begin remembering all that. Wow, that was pretty good. Now we got what? What are we eating, manna? Oh, goodness. And so they have a petition to make. And we all know the petition by now. All of our minds are now getting very refreshed. And by the way, right after they get this craving, it's interesting because the Lord says to Moses, you got to get some people. If we're going to do the meat thing, if we're going to have big buffets, you're going to need more people to help you. And so he gathers 70 men and it's very reminiscent of the same complaining that went on in the book of Acts. Remember about the food distribution? It's almost like there's something about the people of God and eating. We love to eat and we love to mix our eating with our religiosity. That's why every church desires to have that fellowship hall with the ovens and the stoves. We're just, we're just, we're just into that. Okay. So they want food. God says, OK, this is going to require a lot of elders. And by the way, all of these motivations eventually became very spiritual. The deacons became very spiritual, and the elders become very spiritual. But here's what God thinks about their craving. And this is scary, but this is what he thinks about their craving. He tells Moses, tell these people they're not going to have meat one day, not two days, not five days, not 10 days, not 20. They're going to have meat for a whole month until it comes out their nostrils. God is acting like a Jewish woman, really. He is. He's basically saying, I'll give them meat. You'll get so sick of the meat, it'll become loathsome to you. You'll hate it. Because you rejected what I wanted to serve you. And by the way, your daily bread, the manna you get from heaven, is God's will for you. And a lot of us complain to God, God, why do I have this? Why don't I have that? Why can't we have this? Why do we have that? And we're just complaining about what we have and what we don't have. And if God gives you something, thank Him for it. If He doesn't give you something, thank Him for it again. It's not about what you want, it's about what He wants. And they had a desire of their flesh in which they wanted stuff. And it gets a little worse because they insisted upon the meat. It says, while the meat was between their teeth, before they even consumed it, the anger of the Lord was kindled against them and the Lord struck down people with a very great plague. I wonder if what's happening in America is because of our continual passions and lusts and desires. We can't have enough. So instead of accepting God's manna from heaven, they lusted in their flesh. But the second great lust that we're told about is, and it deals with the friendship with the world, is we have a lust of our eyes. That is to say we see things and we want to possess things. I see that. I want that. Let me go after that. I like that. Let me get that. And we look at it in the terms of money, but it's really anything material. And it really is about having something, possessing something, controlling something. I want power. I want items. I want something. And we can see it definitely when there's a leadership vacuum. When Moses goes away, there's a leadership vacuum. And Aaron is nothing more than a puppet of the people. Aaron is one of these political people. I said, what do the people want? Let me see what they want. Oh, they would like to have that. Well, let me give them that. And then they'll all like me. This is the difference between a religious leader and a spiritual leader. A religious leader will always take the climate, the temperature, and give you what you want. What is it you want? I'll give it to you. Then you'll like me and follow me. Spiritual leaders are different because they care what God wants, and it's oftentimes not what the people want. That is the symbol of Wall Street, I think, but it was also the symbol that they worshipped. The possessions. Having things. But now it gets a little bit more intimate. See, it's one thing to be criticized by the people and people you don't know, but what happens when your closest friends begin to question your authority and begin to question whether you're everything we thought you were? And that's exactly what happened. Can we go back one? Somehow I jumped ahead. Oh, no, there we go. So here's what happens, and this is actually pretty sad. Miriam, who was Moses' sister, and also Aaron, Aaron's sister too. And Aaron's a close friend of Moses, and Miriam is really close. They begin to speak against Moses. Now this is tough. This hurts. It's not the rabble. It's the family. It's the close people. And they begin to wonder about this. Here's what they wonder about. because of the Cushite woman whom he had married. And now, what was the big deal with the Cushite woman? The only thing that scholars can figure out is this, is that most likely she was from Ethiopia because that's where most of them are from. And she was probably dark and plected. And so, and she's probably young and beautiful. And Moses picks her, probably because she's dark and plected and young and beautiful. And they got a problem with that. That seems contrary to all of Moses' emphasis on non-materialism, desert stuff. He's got himself a really, really smoking hot wife. Much like me. Aw, what is my wife? Well, listen. And by the way, Marian is a prophetess. She's not just a sister. In Exodus 12, it says she was a prophetess. Aaron's a prophet. And now they're speaking against Moses, their leader. And here's what they say. And they try to make it as pious and as religious and as spiritual as people do. Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also? Moses, you don't get the corner on revelation from heaven and God. We hear him too. And what he's telling us is different than what he's telling you. And we want you to start thinking a little bit more. We're not the rabble. We're your friends and we're your relatives. So does anybody remember how this story ends? I'll give you a clue. It doesn't end particularly well. So here's the commentary on Moses. And this is the commentator of every good spiritual leader. And now Moses was, this is right after this, following verses. And now Moses was very meek. Now if you saw Moses parting the Red Sea and leading the people and coming from a place of, you You would not necessarily describe him as meek, but what this word meek means is that he was very, very concerned about God's will. And the only time he moved is when God told him to move, and he never moved without it. So he was meek in the sense that he had no will of his own. Now, when he stood up there to do this, it looked like, whoa, Moses thinks he's somebody special. But in his heart, Moses is like, God, what do you want me to do? You want me to free the Israelites? Well, let me try that. Oh, they reject me. Oh, now I get a burning bush telling me to go back. Well, I don't want to go back. And he says, go back. So Moses is not one of these authoritative people that always wants power. He's simply a man who's trying to follow God. He's meek. And he's meeker than all the people on the face of the earth. In other words, he is intimate with God, and he only wants what God wants. And that looks weird sometimes to people. But these friends kind of want to know, Moses to know that, hey, they want to call some shots too. And the Lord came down in a cloud, a pillar, and stood at the entrance of the tent. And then he, this is like getting called to the principal's office, by the way. He calls Aaron and Miriam, come forward. I want to talk to you. You're criticizing Moses. Let me talk to you now. And here's what God says to them. Hear my words. If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream. He's validating their ministry. He says, I know you hear from God. I know you're prophetic. I know you have visions, and I know that's your deal. But let me tell you, my relationship with Moses, it's different from you. My relationship with Moses is like this. He is faithful in all my, this is where you see the friendship. Moses could give two flips about what any person thinks if God's not in it. He has a passion for loyalty to God and God alone. He is faithful in all my house. With him, I speak mouth to mouth. I speak clearly, not in riddles. I tell him exactly. So, what he's saying, God is saying, is, I am much more intimate. And then God says this, I am kind of mystified. If you know that I have this intimacy with him, and you know, and you've heard him speak, and you know that it comes from me, why then were you not afraid to speak against him? If you know that he's called of God, and if you know he hears from God, and if you know he seeks the Lord, why would you be so quick to speak against him? It's mystifying to me. This happened many, many thousands of years ago, and let me tell you, every church in America, the same thing plays out every single year, week. That's the way it is. We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, we desire many times democracies over theocracies. Well, in this particular case, go back one, in this particular case, the anger of the Lord was kindled against them. Miriam became leperdess. She became a leper. Her skin turned as white as snow. And all of us go, wow, God, that's a little severe. It's a little severe. And I'm sure many pastors have abused texts like this to get people to behave themselves. Like, don't speak against God's anointed. And trust me, I am anti-manipulation of scriptures to protect your place of authority. But let me just say this. You, as a human being, should be very cautious about speaking against spiritual authority if it's called by God, because God doesn't care about the leader necessarily. He cares about the fact that He selected that leader, much like He selected the manna, and He views it as a revolt against Him, not against the leader. So be careful. I say that to you as a loving, concerned person. Listen. The desires of the eyes is you see people have stuff that you want, and you begin to want that power, that control. But then there's one other lust that we all have in our human nature, in our humanness, and that is we love pride, glory, we did it, aren't we wonderful? And by the way, this seems to be the most benign, but let me tell you, it's the biggest sin that I see in the church, bar none. Bar none. The pride of life. And what is the pride of life summed up in a word? Here it is. Believe in yourself. I bet you Sunday school teachers have this posted on their, for the little kids to see. Johnny, you just need, you have a low self-esteem now. You just need to believe in yourself. By the way, if anybody knows of any of our Sunday school teachers pumping kids to believe in themselves? Because this little seed of believe in yourself leads to stuff like this. Believe in yourself and the universe is forced to believe in you. If I could quote Oprah for a second, no, I won't do that. The laws of attraction, oh. And then it leads to this. If you believe in yourself, anything is possible. And what you see in the people in this final test is do they believe in God or do they believe in themselves? And what you're going to see is as much as somebody must have had this poster hanging next to the Ten Commandments in the desert because here's what God says to them and it's really the final test. before they get hammered with 40 years in the wilderness. Remember, it's only two years in, and they get to go to the promised land, the land of Cana, and God makes a declaration. Here's what he says. He says, send spies out, and we're not gonna spend a lot of time on this, so don't worry. This is on every Sunday school flannel board, by the way. This is the most popular flannel board story in the history of the church. We sent out spies in the land of Cana, and then the Lord says, which I am giving. Notice the word, I am giving. I am giving you this land. I have spoken. I've worked it out. Go take it because I'm giving it to you. It's yours. And we all know the crazy flannel board story. They come back, they got, oh yeah, it's a land flow, milk and honey, oh yeah, there's big things, oh yeah. Yeah, but as big as those grapes are, there are people big enough to eat those grapes. And here's the declaration. Notice God says, I am doing this. I am doing this. Notice how they respond. It is, we are not able. Well, of course you're not able. But based upon the fact that we believe in ourselves, We have measured ourselves against them, and we just think it would be foolishness for we, the smaller people, to go against them, the taller people. We don't want to do it, because we have made this assessment. They are stronger than we are. Notice there's no mention of God whatsoever. We are not able, they're stronger, we're not. It's as if God is speaking to a wall. And by the way, this is how I sometimes think, as people are just so human, so human. We're not. And finally they said, listen, we've had it, we've had it. We've had it, Moses, you've taken us on a wild goose chase. We've determined, we've voted, we have a council, we've decided, let's go back to Egypt. And we've already begun the process of choosing leaders who are willing to lead us the proper way back to Egypt. Forget the promised land because we have determined that we're not able. That's the assessment. Do you understand what I'm saying here? There's two ways of looking at every problem. So the two guys, Joshua and Caleb, who are men of faith, we know the story. They said, if the Lord delights in us, we will. He will. No, not we will. He will. Notice he doesn't say we will. He will. He will. Not about us. It's about him. He said go, we go. He will. And you want to know what the people said when they said he will? You want to see how these people were responding? You want to see them? They said, listen, just don't rebel against the Lord. They said, well, okay, how about we just kill you? So they lift up stones and they want to kill Joshua and Caleb right there on the spot. At this point, God must be going, oh my God, oh my me, oh me. That's right, oh me, oh me would be better than oh God. Look, I've had it. I've absolutely, flat out, completely, totally, no turning back. I've had it. It's over. It's done. Forget it. Forget it. Forget it. Forget it. Forget it. Forget it. And then he pronounces this. All right, here we go. This is it. This is the final word. What are we, two years and two months into this? This is it. I've had it. Not a single one of you are going into this land. I swore to you. I said I would do it. I said I would. But no. Oh, the giants are too big for us. So Caleb gets it. Joshua gets it. They go in. Here's what I'm going to pronounce. Here's my final judgment, final answer. According to the number of days in which you had spies, which were 40 days, you had 40 days to figure it out, you come back with that crazy report. So here's my judgment. 40 years. Forty years you're gonna know how mad I am about this. For every day that they spent scouting it out, coming back with this crazy, we can't do it! That's it, you're done. You're done. It's over. Now here's the funny part of the story. God gives His final judgment. And the people, when they hear this final word, here's what the people, when Moses told them these words, all the people of Israel, Oh, no! So the people of Israel, because they know God's serious, this is funny, I think. Sad, but funny. God pronounces his judgment. The next day, the people come back. They rose up early in the morning. They went to the heights of the hill, and they say to Moses, here we are! We will go to the place that the Lord has promised. We've changed our minds. We're ready. Let's do this thing. You know, I don't know if anyone's a fan of the Jewish comedians, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, but they had an episode on Seinfeld in which George Costanza just tells off his boss, gets fired, and then decides the next day he will come back as if nothing happened. Like he was never fired by his boss and never told off his boss. That's what this is like. God basically said, that's it. I'm done. I'm finished. It's over. And they return the next day like, OK, we're good. Let's do this. We don't remember no rebellion. We don't remember stoning. That wasn't us. We're ready. Well, at this point, God really has enough. Really has enough. Final thing. These people, with all of their zeal and all their gusto, presumed This is, again, one of the greatest sins in the church. We presume that we can make decisions and God will bless them, because after all, that was a promise at one point. Now, it's been revoked, but they said, we presume that we'll go up. And then Moses says, listen, let me tell you what's going to happen now. Now, this is the crazy part. Neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses departed from the camp. In other words, you folks are on your own. God's not going with you. I'm not going with you. No pillar, no clouds. But somehow, they begin to really believe in themselves. that they can actually do this, pump themselves up, and the story goes that they went to do battle without the Lord on their side, and they all died. That's right, they all died. And if you want to get really into this, you can look at another revolt that happened, a showdown, Quran, and he gets a bunch of people together. They're going to have a revolt and all this. And God eventually gets to the point where he wipes them all out. And he basically is just like saying, all right, maybe for the next 38 or so years, Even though you're not going into the promised land, maybe we can just coexist. And it's an awful story of what might have been if they just were friends with God. Thanks for listening to this message from River Mountain Church. Our church is located in Shefton, Pennsylvania. If you'd like some more information, visit our website, rivermountainchurch.org. you