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Numbers chapter 21 verses 10
through 20. These are God's words. Now the
children of Israel moved on and camped in Oboth. And they journeyed
from Oboth and camped at Ej Abarim in the wilderness, which is east
of Moab toward the sunrise. From there they moved and camped
in the valley of Zareb. From there they moved and camped
on the other side of the Arnan, which is in the wilderness that
extends from the border of the Amorites. For the Arnan is the
border of Moab between Moab and the Amorites. Therefore it is
said in the Book of the Wars of Yahweh, Wahab in Sufah, the
brooks of the Arnan, and the slope of the brooks that reaches
to the dwelling of Ar, and lies on the border of Moab. From there
they went to Be'er, which is the well where Yahweh said to
Moses, gather the people together and I will give them water. Then
Israel sang this song, spring up a well, all of you sing to
it. The well the leaders sank, dug
by the nation's nobles, by the lawgiver with their staves. And
from the wilderness they went to Matanah, and from Matanah
to Nahaliel, from Nahaliel to Bamoth, and from Bamoth in the
valley that is in the country of Moab to the top of Pisgah,
which looks down on the wasteland. Amen. Thus ends the reading of
God's inspired and inerrant word. We look to him to add his blessing
to the preaching of it. I need all the children who can
count to help us in the introduction of the sermon. There's an important
thing that I think we need to notice, that the Holy Spirit
wants us to notice by way of counting. And that is to count
all of the stops that the people of God make in this passage. They start in a place, and we
won't count the place that they begin, because the place that
they begin is where they were discouraged on the way, and they
had to have the bronze serpent to save them from God's judging
them by the poisonous spikes. So we won't count the starting
place. Tin says, now the children of
Israel moved on and camped in Oboth. Okay, so Oboth. That's one. And they journeyed
from Oboth and camped at Ege-Aberin. Okay, difficult to say, easier
to count. That's two. In the wilderness,
which is east of Moab, towards the sunrise. From there, they
moved and camped in the Valley of Zerut. OK, so now we're up
to three. From there, they moved and camped
on the other side of the Arnon, which is in the wilderness that
extends from the border of the Amorites. For the Arnon is the
border of Moab between Moab and the Amorites. OK, so the other
side of the Arnon makes four. OK, there it is said in the Book
of the Wars of Yahweh, Wahab and Shufa, the brooks of the
Arnim, and the slope of the brooks that reaches to the dwelling
of Ar and lies on the border of Moab. Just quoting from another
book, so we won't count that. They're still at Arnim. From
there, they went to Be'er, which is five. Thank you. I had started to lose count.
I'm glad we have children helping me by mouthing or holding fingers.
Be'er is five, which is the well where Yahweh said to Moses, et
cetera. And from the wilderness, which
is Be'er in the wilderness. I skipped down to verse 18 there,
you can see. They went to, I skipped a song, Matanah. Okay, so Matanah
makes six. From Matanah to Nahaliel, seven,
thank you. From Nahaliel to Baboth, That's
eight. And from Bab Moth in the valley
that is in the country of Mamab to the top of Pisgah. So that's nine. Nine, which looks
down on the wasteland or the desert. I think actually that's
the word Negev there. So the south, the southern part
of the promised land. If you were reading this from
the promised land and you heard Pesach, well, you'd also know
that that's where Moses got to see the promised land before
he died. But when it said that he looked down on the Negev,
that was the name of the southern area of the Judean hill country. You wouldn't hear wasteland.
You would hear a piece of the promised land. So very different. Feeling, very different connotation
at the end of verse 20, I think, if we translate it that way.
All right, so how many did we have? We had nine stops. And
it's not usual for the pastor in the introduction to the sermon
to ask you to kind of participate and to do that, but we needed
to slow down a little bit. Often when we're reading the
Bible, God does things for us to help us slow down so that
we will think and things will sink in. Now I know at least
one, of you little scholars who not too many weeks ago went through
a unit adding zero to numbers or adding numbers to zero. And
you discovered, of course, you knew immediately at the beginning
of the first lesson, it's obvious that it doesn't change the number.
Nine is the number of stops. Zero is the number of times in
those nine stops that we saw, that we see in this passage,
Israel complain or grumble. They obviously got thirsty at
one point because at one of the stops, God provides them water.
has Moses gather Israel to give them water. And Moses does what
he says and God gives them water. And they write a song about it.
So it's not that they didn't have the problems that they had
before. But zero is the number of complaints, or grumblings,
or rebelling against God's servant, or any of those things that we've
seen Israel continually do throughout the time since they left Egypt.
They remember they didn't even get to Sinai before they had
started their complaining and grumbling. And so there is something
wonderful here. And it is the work of God and
his people. We see that it's a gracious work
in the first place. We see it's a historical work
in the second place. And we see that it's a praiseworthy
work in the third place. First, it's a gracious work. We just had these nine stops
with no judgment-inducing incidents among the people of God, and
it's really a glorious miracle by the time we get to this point.
Think of all the things that God had given Israel that had
not produced a streak like this of faithfulness and submission
and contentment and obedience to him. They had seen the mighty
hand with which he judged Egypt. And they had seen the mighty
hand with which he delivered them, not only sparing their
firstborn in the tenth plague, but brought them out of Egypt. And then when Egypt chased them,
and God had led them, remember, on purpose to the place where
they were pinned against the sea by the armies of Egypt, God
had delivered them through the sea, and then he used the same
sea through which he had saved them and made them to walk on
dry land to drown the Egyptian army. And there's a parallel
at that point that we'll get to in the third part, the praiseworthy
work in verses 16 through 18. Well, they had seen God do miracle
after miracle. And then God had given them his
means. He had made a covenant with them,
gathered them to himself at Sinai, thundered his own voice From
the top of the mountain, which he made to shake and smoke and
burn with fire, he had showed them his holiness and his glory. He had communicated to them,
showed them that they were his own people. And he was their
very own God. And he used that sort of language
when he says, I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the
land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and then in the second
commandment. Yahweh your God is a jealous
God. The third commandment, the name
of Yahweh your God. The fourth commandment of the
Sabbath of Yahweh your God. The fifth commandment, the land
that Yahweh your God is giving you. And so they had his miracles
and they had his covenant and they had the means of his grace. He had given them his word. He
gave them the tabernacle with the ways of drawing near. You remember the different offerings,
and always remember that word offering means to draw near. It's a way that God gives his
people to draw near to himself. And the ascension, to draw near
to him by ascending, even as Jesus, of course, is our ascension
and has ascended, And the tribute, bringing Jesus in hand, what's
commonly called the brain offering, and the peace, another way of
coming here. And so they had all of these
means. And in addition to the miracles and God's revealing
himself to them, manifesting himself to them, and the means
that God provided, he'd also given them misery. Every time
they sinned against him, he had disciplined them. Well, not every
time. At multiple points when they had sinned greatly against
them, he disciplined them severely. He judged them severely. And
despite all those things, we still hadn't seen them walk faithfully
with the Lord for any extended period of time. And praise God,
that's a great help to us because many of us have seen wonders
that God has done in our lives even, or in the lives of people
near us, in addition to the wonders that we see throughout the Bible
and that we know of throughout church history. Many of us have
known that we belong to God and he belongs to us, he's taken
us to be his very own people. Many of us have had the means
of his grace His day, His worship, in that worship, His Word read
and sung and prayed and preached, praying itself and preaching,
the preaching of His Word. We've had His means and we've
even had the misery. He has not treated us like we're
illegitimate children. He's treated us as true sons,
true children, and we have done things and we have gotten our
swaths. in different ways that he brings pain and difficulty
to our lives. And he has at those times gotten
our attention. And we have either known as soon
as it came, what God was trying to get our attention about, or
we've just been going on in our own way so ignorantly and willfully
that he's gotten our attention and we've had to stop and say,
now, what will the Lord do? What is the Lord calling me to
repent of? Is there something that I don't see? And despite
all of those things, how often we find ourselves saying with
Paul at the end of Romans 7, the things that I hate, I keep
doing. And the things that I want to
do, I keep on failing to do. I keep on not doing. And so one
of the things that God immediately gives us to see, he gives us
this setup with all of the things in the life of Israel thus far
that have not produced something like this nine-stop streak, at
least not that he's told us of, and he gives us the payoff. The
thing that has produced this was not the miracles, and it
was not by itself even the means or the work or the covenant.
or the chastening that leaves one thing that could have produced
this. God's almighty gracious work. God himself has to do the
work in the soul of his people. And that means that ordinary
faithfulness is the fruit of extraordinary grace. And so for
us, on the one hand, that means that God, the God of extraordinary
grace, is our hope when we see how we have continued to stumble
after all that God has done for us and done to us. We still have
that hope in Him, but when we go through a season, When we
plod faithfully for a few hours or days or weeks, that we would
look back and we would be grateful to God that this has not been,
I finally got it. This has not been the stuff is
finally working, but it has been a season of God working by his
almighty power in his covenant love to keep us faithful for
a few days or weeks or months or years. I think some of us
have felt this inherently, that every once in a while we get
to the end of the day and we obviously haven't been sinless,
there's much that we're confessing, and yet God has given us an ordinarily
faithful day, and we lay our heads down on the pillow, and
if we're understanding what has just happened in that day of
the history of our lives, our hearts rise with thankfulness
to the God. who kept us from evil and lead
us into temptation. And he delivered us from the
evil in those temptations. There's not just the daily bread. There's the daily grace. And
so there's glorious grace in ordinary blotting. So that's
the first thing God shows us here about his work, that it
is a gracious work. The second thing is that it is
a historical work. It feels like an odd interruption
in verses 14 and 15, especially since you and I don't have a
copy of the book of the words of Yahweh. Modern-day commentators speculate,
whatever, maybe in God's mercy to us, he will at some point
allow the archaeologists to dig up a jar that's been sealed for
a couple thousand years, and there will be something in it
that identifies itself as the Book of the Wars of Galway, and
we'll read in it, Wahab and Sufah, and the Brooks of the Arnhem,
the Slope of the Brooks, it reaches to the dwelling of Ar and lies
on the border of Moab. You know who knew what the Book
of the Wars of Yahweh was? The people of God who first received
the Book of Numbers from the pen of Moses. There was someone,
maybe it was an Israelite, maybe it was someone from another one
of the nations, an historian who had just taken note of these
extraordinary and amazing things that These Hebrews, who were
nobodies, had done and written something called the Book of
the Words of Yahweh. But here the Bible quotes from that book. Now, that does not show, regardless
of what the unbelieving and rebellious commentators love to say, that
Moses was dependent upon other histories. No. Moses is writing
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The reason we know
that these nine stops were historical events is because God says so
in Numbers chapter 21. God says so in the Bible. God
wants his people to see and to know and be convinced that the
historical factuality, the historicity of his work is important. Because God is real and he has
really done this work. It is important that Jesus, God
the Son, historically became a man. and lived his righteous
life and died his death on the cross, and that as a historical
fact, as you remember, Paul says is attested by 500 witnesses,
most of whom were alive at the time that 1 Corinthians 15 were
written. Why did Paul say that? Was 1
Corinthians somehow validated by these 500 witnesses? Of course
not. Was the resurrection somehow
valid? No, the resurrection was validated, authenticated by God
telling them about it in his word. It was valid and authentic
because it actually happened. And the way they knew it was
true was because God had said so in his word. But you see how
God comes to us who are weak in our faith. And we often struggle
with unbelief. And even though we should, out
of submission to God and acceptance of his word, we should accept
whatever his word says as the highest degree of authentication. Yet he, knowing our weakness,
comes and he says, see, Tacitus also says this, and Josephus
also says this. And then he allows some arrogant,
mostly Germans, but there are liberal Americans among them
as well in the 1800s to take all of these names and events
and places that are in the Bible and say, see, we have no historical
record of these things. invented nonsense. This is religious
myth. And then for the next 150 years,
many archaeologists, some of them in God's ironic and just
providence German, not all, but archaeologists for 150 years,
end up digging up the insignias and the capstones and the documents,
et cetera, that tell all these names of these places and these
events that the liberals have said, usually the Bible isn't
true because history doesn't record that. And it turns out
history does. But it's also for us, isn't it? So that we will
remember that it is important that God's work is historical
work. He is and he has actually done
these things. And so of course they were supposed
to know and believe this on account of God giving it to them by the
pen of Moses. But the Holy Spirit here emphasizes
to us the necessity, the importance of believing that this is history. that this is historically factual,
and so is all of God's work. One of the reasons why it's so
important is because your life right now is history, and it's
historically factual, and you are not to interact with God
as if he is some combination of religious ideas and feelings
that men have come up with. or even a combination of religious
ideas and feelings that he has somehow mysteriously communicated
to you. No, God is. He has existence
inherent in himself. When you answer your catechism
question, what is God? Remember that that first thing
in which he is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in is his being. He is, and your worshiping with
Him is to be an actual interaction with Him. The idea that God is
addressing us in His Word, and especially in the preaching,
or that He is listening to us as we pray, these are not just
religious fantasies, these are historical facts. Remember from
last week's morning sermon passage, how Jesus was warning those who
were playing at religion. Do not play at interacting with
God. Do not play at worship. Do not
play at faith. Interact with Him who is. You know, present history is
history just as much as past history. It is historical. It is real. It is true. And you
are to really and truly interact with the God who is and who is
working even now. You know, future history is just
as factual as past history, especially when God has told you what that
future history is. It's not in any more doubt than
past history. It's just as certain. It just
hasn't happened yet. So that you have, for instance, in Romans
8, that wonderful statement, those whom he foreknew, he predestined. Those whom he predestined, he
also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom
he justified, he also glorified. But there are a bunch of foreknown
people and predestined people who are not yet called. They
haven't been born yet. Well, bless the Lord, Terry's.
And there are a bunch of justified people in this room who I love
you, but not yet glorified. And yet, God can say it. It's
past tense. Why? Because that which he has
decided to do, and that which he has told us he will most certainly
do, is as factual a history, even though it's future history,
as if it had already occurred. So God's work is a historical
work. God's work in his people is a gracious work. It's a historical
work. It's also a praiseworthy work. From there, they went to
Be'er, which is the well where Yahweh said to Moses, gather
the people together and I will give them water. Then Israel
sang this song, spring up oh well. Now we don't know, it's
probably not the same place as in chapter 20, verse eight and
eight through 10. You remember when the people
were grumbling about water in the wilderness at Zin at Kadesh? And Yahweh spoke to Moses saying,
take the rod, you and your brother Aaron, gather the congregation
together and speak to the rock and so forth. And then verse
10 of chapter 20, and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together
before the rock. And they were supposed to speak
to the rock in front of the people. Why? So that God could be hallowed. before the eyes of Israel so
that they could see how God was taking care of them and loving
them and providing water for them, even though they had grumbled,
even though they deserved wrath. And Moses gave them wrath instead
of displaying God's mercy to their wrath, you remember. And
that's why Moses and Aaron couldn't enter the land in chapter 20,
verse 12. Because you did not believe me
to hallow me in the eyes of the children of Israel. And so again,
God didn't just provide water. He says, gather the people together
and I will give them water. Why? Because the people were
supposed to see more than water. The people were supposed to see
the God of power and the God of mercy providing for them. And that's what they saw. He said to Moses, gather the
people together and I will give them water. It doesn't even tell
us about them drawing from the well, and behold, there was water,
and there was enough for the people, and there was enough
for their animals. It doesn't give anyone that information.
It just says, that's the well where Yahweh said to Moses, gather
the people together, and I will give them water. Then Israel
sang this song. because the main thing was for
the people to be gathered to behold the grace of God and then
the people to sing and praise in response to the grace of God.
And this is where we said earlier, remember, when God had drowned
the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, let me read you from the
end of Exodus 14 and into Exodus 15, thus Israel saw the great
work which Yahweh had done in Egypt. So the people feared Yahweh
and believed Yahweh and his servant Moses. Then Moses and the children
of Israel sang this song to Yahweh and spoke, saying, I will sing
to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its
rider he has thrown into the sea. And in that case, it gives
us the entire song through verse 18, and then in verse 20 of Exodus
15, you remember Miriam leads the women of Israel. Then Miriam,
the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her
hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and
with dances. And Miriam answered them, sing
to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and its
rider he has thrown into the sea. And it doesn't give us the
rest of the song. So here, when we have, then Israel sang this
song, what we're to remember is God has not just provided
water for them, he has provided praise for them. He has provided
the knowledge of himself as their deliverer, who loves them and
redeems them. Just as God had not merely provided
for them safety from the pursuing Egyptian army, he had provided
praise for them. so that they would sing of the
triumphs of Yahweh who has triumphed gloriously and cast the horse
and rider into the sea. And that probably indicates that
what we have in these few lines in verses 17 through 18 are not
the whole song. That this is just the opening
lines of a more extended song that is real new at the time
and that we don't know now. You see, God doesn't just intend
to make you a survivor. He doesn't just deliver you so
that you will have survived your trouble or survived your danger.
God's work intends to make you a worshiper. He's gathered you
here so that you would see by faith that God saves you, so
that you would know that by His grace we should respond with
praise. By grace, in this passage, the
people rightly responded with a song. Now, why to sing? Well, when you sing together,
there is an identifying with one another and a unifying with
one another. There's something about song
that we even hear God talk about, doesn't he, in Ephesians 5 and
Colossians 3, admonishing one another. There is a unity and
a fellowship in singing together that is of a different quality,
and often of a deeper quality, than merely talking together
or chatting together. We know that God uses song to
make the words of Christ dwell more richly in our hearts. And
we know that not only in the nation of Israel, but many cultures
use song for an event like this in order to imprint it upon the
memory. the histories of the nations were often sung. They're
given not just in prose, but in poetry, so that it is retained
better. And that's one of the reasons
God gives us psalms. Psalm 78, for instance, and there
was, There was another text that slipped
my mind just now that said a very similar thing in the catechism
class today. In Psalm 78, verse 7, here's
this long song about the wilderness wanderings that God has given
his people to sing. In fact, 78a in the Trinity Psalter
hymnal is the longest song in any of our books. Well, why that
song? verses five through seven. For he established a testimony
in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded
our fathers that they should make them known to their children,
that the generation to come might know them, the children who would
be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children,
that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works
of God, his praiseworthy works. because his communicating to
us his glory and his praise and his work is one of the ways that
he graciously works in us and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments and may not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation. a generation that did not set
its heart right and whose spirit was not faithful to God. God
wants us not only to see that his work is gracious, that he
works by his power in our hearts to produce life and faith and
faithfulness, not only that his work is historical, That the
same God who did those things then is the one with whom we
are interacting now, who is working on us and in our lives now. But
to see that his work is praiseworthy. That as he works in our lives,
we would respond with praise and song. Not just with our voice,
but with your soul. that you would identify with
him and with his people as you sing his praise together with
one another, that his word would dwell richly in your heart as
you sing it, and that this would be what holds before us and the
means by which we communicate to the generations to come the
wonderful works of God that we might hope in him. and not wander
and not rebel, but rather keep his commandments. Praise God
for setting before us in this passage, throughout his word,
in so many of his songs, his gracious and historical and praiseworthy
work. Let's pray. how interesting it is and the
way that your spirit has used some of its interesting characteristics
to call our attention to important doctrine that you're communicating
to us here. Help us, Lord, to deal truly,
genuinely with you, not to think that faithfulness in our life
is gonna come in any other way, but to look to you to work in
us by your grace to produce it. Bless your means, employ them.
You have appointed the means of your grace. Honor those means
that you have appointed by using them. But we pray, Lord, that
it would be you who use them, and that when we see you doing
so, you would enlarge our hearts and loosen our lips to sing your
praise. Grant these things, we ask, in
the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus, the sweet psalmist of
Israel, who is great David's greater Son, and your Son from
all eternity, our Savior. We ask it in his name.
Praising God’s Gracious, Historical Work
Series Numbers
We should sing God's glorious grace that is necessary even for ordinary faithfulness.
| Sermon ID | 916242328351261 |
| Duration | 34:03 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Numbers 21:10-20 |
| Language | English |
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