NewCity Orlando Sermons

Numbers 28-36 | In the Wilderness

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Listen to this week’s sermon, In the Wilderness preached by Pastor Jason Dunn from Numbers 28-36.

Scripture Reading: 

Numbers 33:1-2; 33:55-56; 34:1-2; 35:34


Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Joshua Esquivel:

Good morning. Please join me in reading the Prayer of Illumination. Holy Spirit, open our hearts to hear your word, and through your word, create in our hearts a home for your presence, that we might live for the glory of the Father and the kingdom of his beloved Son. Through Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. Our scripture today comes from Numbers. These are the stages of the people of Israel when they went out of the land of Egypt by their companies under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. Moses wrote down their starting places stage by stage by command of the Lord, and these are the stages according to their starting places. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell, and I will do to you as I thought to do to them. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the people of Israel and say to them, When you enter the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall for your inherit for you for an inheritance, the land of Canaan as defined by its borders. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell. For I, the Lord, dwell in the midst of the people of Israel. This is God's word.

Pastor Jason Dunn:

Well, good morning. Good morning. That's okay. Wasn't a big response. Well, my name is Jason, and I am one of the pastors here at New City. And as Ben already alluded to, we are ending our wandering through the book of Numbers. I got a laugh, Ben. Ben didn't think I was going to get a laugh, but I did. So today we come to the end. And now your bulletin actually has a misprint because we did chapters 33, 34, and 35 for our scripture reading today. But Ben, he kind of left us back at chapter 27. So we were at a Mount of Erebim, and I'm supposed to take us to the end of Numbers, which is chapter 36, at the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho. So that's roughly 10 chapters, and we're not going to get to all of it today, but I think we're going to get to something really significant. For me, I think some of us are kind of excited about moving on from the wanderings in the book of Numbers. Right? As Ben just alluded, we're going to be beginning our Advent series here next week, and we get to talk about Christmas and the coming of Christ. And there's just so much goodness that happens in that holiday season. Also, it means that we're moving from the Old Testament book here in the fall, and we're going to a New Testament book in the spring. So that's kind of exciting for some of us. But for me, honestly, the slowing down in the wilderness, it has been really, really good for my soul. And we've called the wilderness here at New City God's Discipleship School or God's formation school. He is forming us in the wilderness. This is a picture of our pilgrim journey into a particular people for a particular person. That's Jesus Himself. But if you never really slow down, if you never go stage by stage, you will miss what God is doing in that. You'll miss who we truly are as a people of God, and you will miss who God truly is. So, like the Israelites, as we end our numbers series, I'm inviting us to continue to slow down, to look at the stage that God has guided us in. In our text that Josh had read this morning, there was this really interesting line. God warns us as we continue in this journey about the barbs in our eyes and the thorns in our flesh. These are the challenges that we face as we move from stage to stage where we are being pulled away from dependence and trust in God. And so we're gonna we're gonna see this this morning in this way that God is the one who guides us stage by stage toward the promised land. And that is our two points that God guides us stage by stage, point one, point two toward the promised land. If you have a Bible or device, because this is not in the bulletin, please look with me at chapter 33, verse one. These are the stages of the people of Israel, when they went out from the land of Egypt by their companies under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. The point is this that we are all in stages. God works with his people in a developmental way. If you heard the sermon from last week, it was awesome. Ben preached, and he weaved in the psychosocial Eric Erickson developmental stage theory with Ronald Roehiser's discipleship stages. There was this interweaving that Ben did. The points really stuck out to me is the struggle to get your life together, the struggle to give your life away, and the struggle to give your death away. But there was a theme there for me. As I kind of sat in these chapters of Numbers and I looked at the book of Numbers, it was the fact that all of those stages are defined by struggle. No matter where you are on the journey, no matter which stage you're in, there is a struggle. That's just the definition of the wilderness. That's the pilgrim journey that we are on. That's the reality of the already but not quite yet kingdom of God. This might be coming from the guy who kind of sits with our people in their brokenness and fragmented wildernesses, but I actually don't think you guys can deny it. It's the stage four cancer diagnosis, way too early in life. It's the loss of a job, an uncertainty of the way forward. It's another miscarriage and the shut door of infertility. It's the death of a dream or death of a loved one. It's broken relationships between husbands and wives, between parents and children. It's our hope being deferred once again. That's the wilderness that we are in. That's the struggle we experience. So life is hard. And God, but the beautiful thing is that God does not leave us alone there. He actually guides us stage by stage. And that is the hope that we have. Victor Frankel, who is a psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor who survived the concentration camps of World War II, he has he did the work of his psychiatry. He looked at people within those camps. And so he continued to practice the vocation that God had given him. And he saw two types of people who endured all of that suffering in the concentration camps. There was those who could make meaning in the suffering, and those who could not make meaning of their suffering. And those who could make meaning of their suffering, they had hope. They experienced life with greater joy, with greater help, with greater purpose. He concluded that hope in suffering is only found in meaning in that suffering. And he called this the last of the human freedoms that no one can take away from you. We actually have meaning in the struggle. We have meaning in our suffering because God is the one who guides us stage by stage. Yes, we are pilgrims, but God guides us. So a natural question comes to my mind, God, if you're guiding us and there's meaning in our suffering, why are you choosing to do this in a suffering and in the wilderness? Well, right there in our text, in verse 1 of chapter 33, it says, They went out of the land of Egypt. They were under the leadership and the authority of who? Pharaoh, the ruler and the rule of the world, right? And they were compromised, they being the people of God, and we are compromised by being under the rule of the world. Even Moses, right, doesn't enter into the promised land. They had biases and practices that were not of God. They had idols deep within their hearts that needed, that demanded God's formation school to get out of them. They needed liberation not just from a geography, but from their imaginations and from their hearts. We too need that liberation from the world, the flesh, and the devil. More on that in a minute. Look down with me at chapter 33 again, verse 2. Moses wrote down their starting places stage by stage by command of the Lord. So again, God is the one who is guiding them. And these are the stages according to their starting places. Now, why do you think Moses wrote those down? I guess if it's a command of the Lord, you better listen, right? And this gives credence to the fact that here in our tradition, we believe in organic inspiration, that God works through human authors to create the living and active word. We believe that the word of God is so inspired by God that it can actually change who we are. It confronts us, it changes us, it conforms us. And that's why uh it actually it comforts us too. So it's not all just the negative. And this is why we actually pray and read scriptures. This is why we have a daily practice of reading God's word. But also, with Moses writing this down, it gave me the idea that it gives credence to the fact that we are a people of stories. We have stories that go stage by stage, and we need to rehearse our personal stories with God. We actually need to write down our stories for ourselves, but also for our children. We need to find our stories in the grand story of God. And here at New City, real quickly, we talk about that in the four-chapter story. Creation, the way things uh had ought to be, the way that God created them, we're all good. The fall, this is the way that things are right now, and this is me describing a little bit the struggle, the way things can be, which is redemption, and the way things will be, where there will be no more tears, no more pain. And so, where is your particular story in that grand story? This actually reminds me that we need to be we need to practice the discipline of journaling, the discipline of being reflective about what God is doing in our lives. And if you have your Bibles or your devices, again, this is not in the bulletin. I would encourage us, let's let's look at chapter 33. There's all these stages, all these places that are listed there. It's not an exhaustive list of actually all of their journey for those 40 years, but you know, 42 sounds like a significant number. God does that sometimes with the numbers in the Bible. It could be six stages of seven, and now they're about to enter the seven set of stages into the promised land of rest. But regardless of like the numbers there in terms of the number of stages that are represented, uh, you can, I I was helped by a commentator, you could break out the stages into three different categories. So look with me. So in uh the first category is the stages represent the Lord's faithfulness in our daily needs. If you look at chapter 33, verse 8 or 9, there is God working with the provision of water at Elam, or making the water, the bitter water sweet. So that's one whole category of stages that are represented here, the Lord's faithfulness. The second big category of stages is the Lord's forgiveness, or I'm gonna call it the Lord's forgetfulness. So if you read in the text in verse 8 or 9, they actually make uh comments about what happened, how the Lord provided. But then there are other stages in the second category of the Lord's forgetfulness, is where uh the Israelites rebelled, they grumbled, their sin was known. But it makes no mention of those specific things because it doesn't want to draw your attention to the fact that the Israelites sin. It wants to draw your attention to God's forgetfulness, God's kindness, God's forgiveness. Hebrews 8 reminds us that God will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more. So we have a bunch of stages here about God's faithfulness, we have stages about God's forgetfulness or forgiveness, but the bulk of the stages that are listed here in chapter 33 of the 42 are just the Lord's ordinary means. We don't really know what happened in those stages. They're listed here, but it's it's in my mind, it's building out this theology of the ordinary. So as we go stage by stage, we need to be reminded of these three things. And we need to write our stories down in light of these things, of these three things: God's faithfulness, God's forgiveness and forgetfulness, and our call to the faithfulness and the mundane of life. So the question I have for you all is can you name the stages or milestones of your journey? Even before Jesus and after Jesus? Where are you in that? Where have you seen God's faithfulness, his forgetfulness or forgiveness, and your call to the mundane life? Now, I've been thinking about this stage thing from stage to stage, obviously, because that's a bulk of chapter 33 this week. And my attention was drawn to 1 John chapter 2. Now, the apostle he gives us kind of another overlay of stages that a Christian can go on on a Christian journey, the way that we are discipled or developed along the way. And you can overlay this actually in the whole book of Numbers. There's a first generation and second generation, but real quickly from 1 John chapter 2, John talks about little children, young men or women, and fathers and mothers. Little children, young adults, and fathers and mothers. Stott does a really good job of explaining this. He says the little children are those who are newborn in Christ. Young men or women are more developed Christians, strong and victorious in spiritual warfare. Whereas fathers and mothers, they possess the depth and stability of ripe Christian experience. It's really an interesting passage in 1 John 2. So it's super simple. Where are you all in that framework of children, young adults, or spiritual fathers and mothers? The point is that God is working in a developmental way with us all. He is the one who's guiding us stage by stage. And the only way out is through. And the only way forward is by looking back, looking back at God's faithfulness, looking back at God's forgiveness and forgetfulness, and looking back so that we can actually embrace what lies ahead. God is the one who guides us stage by stage. Now I want to tell a story real quickly. This was some time ago when I had a little bit of means. I was a single guy, and uh I got I decided to have get LASIK surgery done. I don't know if you guys know the beauty of LASIK surgery, but it's amazing. They take blind people and they make them see. Uh and they do it with lasers, so it's like Star Wars in your eyes, you know. And I don't know how it works. I just paid my money and did it. And so I was in a kind of a stage in my life where I was doing some traveling and I didn't want to have like my contact and kind of stick it in my eye with all this bacteria and all this other stuff. So I had the surgery done. And in this in this time period, I uh I found myself, you know, traveling the world. I was in the South China Sea, and as one does in the South China Sea, I climbed a mountain on a small island, and here I was walking along, not really paying attention to the path that I was on, but I was talking to my buddy, and uh there's these big bamboo stalks along that path. And I don't know if you've seen bamboo, but there's segments and they have these little pokey things that like poke out. Uh and I ran right one into my eye and a barb broke off. And uh here I was on a remote island in the South China Sea. My vision was not really that great, and I was unable to find the next stage of my journey. It didn't really matter that I can see 2015 anymore, because the barb in my eye was going to lead me astray. Now, in the same way, that story connects to our passage here in Numbers, uh, chapter 33, verse 55 and 56. It's the end of the chapter. Look down with me as I read this. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your side, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell. So God is actually calling us to remove and drive out the inhabitants of the land. He's calling the Israelites, right, as they enter the promised land, but he's also calling us, this text is for us. If we do not drive out the temptations and hindrances that call us to compromise, they will be like those things that are like barbs in our eye. We won't be able to see, we will be led astray, and the sin that so easily entangles Hebrews 12, it will get us. There are besetting sins, little areas of compromise. Maybe saying a quick word about a coworker who's not around so that you get ahead and they go behind. Maybe that's parenting with anger and control. Maybe that's consuming digitally and physically all the stuff that you should not do. And what God is saying here to the Israelites, and what God is saying to you, beloved, is that if you do not deal with these things, they shall be trouble to us in the land in which we dwell. God wants us holy. That means all of you and holy. He wants to he wants you to be set apart. And he does not, he does not want you to be led astray. And here at New City, so you might be thinking, like, how am I gonna find these barbs and thorns? Uh, we do that in community. We talk about community as a space where you're known and loved. Community, but also in circles. And so I invite you to be known and loved, be connected to people, that they can help you, be connected to young adults, be connected to spiritual fathers and mothers, where they are able to say, like, hey man, there's a barb right there, and you need to deal with that. Or there's a thorn in your side, and you're kind of walking with the limp there, and you need to deal with that. So wherever you find yourself in this struggle on the journey, know that God is the one that guides us stage by stage. Now, this leads me to my second point. God guides us stage by stage, where? Toward the promised land. Turn with me now. This is in your bulletin, chapter 34, verses 1 and 2. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the people of Israel and say to them, When you enter the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall to you for inheritance, the land of Canaan as defined by its borders. So as I said, we look back so that we can embrace what lies ahead. And what lies ahead is the promised inheritance, the promised land, God Himself. Again, here in these short verses, we're taught that the Lord spoke. So God is the one who guides, God is the one who provides, God is the one, but also who derides our sin in our lives. And so he's forming us, he's working with us, he's developmentally asking us to go through these stages to change us. But God is not walking, he's not asking us to walk through the wilderness aimlessly, right? He knows what lies ahead. He knows that what lies ahead is so great, is so good. So God goes ahead and defines the borders and the boundaries of our inheritance. And I love how precise, if you read the whole of chapter 34 this afternoon, his his precision is so precise. He he his precision, I think, is kindness. His precision is love. Now, Katie and I, when we uh were in 2018, we had fortunate enough experience to buy a house. And so when you buy a house with a mortgage, you got to get it surveyed, right? And so a surveyor comes out and he marks he marks the lots of the line with these big stakes. And it was wonderful. You know, we signed our name to a big thing, and and then we had this house, us and the bank. And uh, and so it took me a year or more, though, to remove the stakes out of the ground. And part of it was you might think, well, geez, did Jason have a feud already with one of his neighbors about the fence location? No, that wasn't it. But it was a reminder to me of the beautiful inheritance that God had given Katie and I. So in the same way, he's defining the boundaries and the borders for the Israelites about who they what the inheritance is ahead. Turn with me to chapter 35, verse 34. Again, it's in your bulletin. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I, the Lord, dwell in the midst of the people of Israel. So, what is the great inheritance that God so aptly defines its borders? It's that we get to dwell with him. This is how the story began in Genesis, Adam and Eve dwelling with their creator, and then it hits a blip there in Genesis 3. But this is how the story of the Bible comes back to us dwelling with God. And this is the story that we unfold in Numbers. That God wants to be in the midst of his people. But you saw the warnings, right? You saw the barb and the thorn, and you see the beginning of chapter 35, verse 34, that we have a problem. The Israelites had a problem. We are defiled. We still have Egypt inside of us. This is why God warns them, you shall not defile the land. And this builds off the warning, as I said in chapter 33, about the barbs and the thorns. Now back to the house that Katie and I bought. When we bought it, it was wonderful. We figured out which trees were ours. And there were certain trees in our house that were really close to our uh the structure itself. But I left them, you know, because I'm like, that provides shade for the for the house and it provides shade for the patio. But these were like volunteer trees, they weren't really great trees. And one of them was so close to the house that it started causing damage to the house. And uh this reminds me of an old saying, and this gets back to the barb and the thorn and uh God calling us not to be defiling in the land. But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So I wasn't there when this little volunteer tree actually first came out of the ground, but if I was, you could have just picked it up out of the ground. But then over time, over 10, 15 years or wherever it's taken that tree to grow, it's gonna take like heavy equipment, maybe a chainsaw. I may have to ask a friend or two to come over to help me take down this little volunteer tree. And so I strongly encourage us. The barbs and thorns, they will be like those trees that grow up and become bigger issues for us to deal with. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound and cure. So pull the weeds, do the work, drive out what so easily entangles. Don't ignore the thorns in your side or the barb in your eye. Jesus tells us the way is narrow and the road is hard, but the road of the struggle that God is guiding us in is to the promised land. It is to himself. Hebrews 12 reminds us, I keep quoting this, about sin that so easily entangles us. How do we throw off every weight and sin which so which clings so closely and run with perseverance, stage by stage? Hebrews 12, 2 says, by looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. So you know that the story does not end well for the Israelites. They fail to deal with the barbs and the thorns, they become defiled in the land. And these are little areas of compromise that led to actually the destruction of their kingdom and the expulsion, uh, exile of God's people. And that's what these little areas of compromise will do to us too. And the reality is that we're unable to do the work ourselves. So we need a savior. And this is ultimately, since this is a series completion, this is ultimately what numbers is pointing us to. We need someone outside of ourselves to actually save us. The Lord wants to dwell in the midst of his people, but we are unable to drive out the inhabitants. We have barbs in our eyes and thorns in our sides. We are defiled. But Jesus is the one who comes and drives the money changers in the temple and drives out all his and our enemies. Jesus is the one who takes on the crown of thorns, so we no longer have a thorn in our side. Jesus is the one who says, Come to me, follow me. He has gone before us, stage by stage. He knows, Hebrews again says, for, he knows our weaknesses. God dwells with his people through our union to that perfect priest, to that sacrificial lamb. And that means that the promised inheritance is Jesus Himself. King David, who had rights over all the land, this is later in the story from Numbers, he had rights over all the land. But he says this in Psalm 16 The Lord is my chosen portion in my cup, and you hold my lot. The lions have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. So King David, who had all of the land, he's choosing what? The Lord as his chosen portion. That is our beautiful inheritance, is Jesus Himself. So union to Jesus, not our performance, not our ability to pull the weeds, actually secures our place in God's promised land. So numbers is not about how we get to God, but how God gets to us. Jesus guides us stage by stage, and there is grace in every step of the way toward the promised land of communion with Him. Let us pray. Father, we are grateful for your love for us in this, that you sent your son stage by stage, from the incarnation to his ministry, to his act of obedience, to his passive obedience on the cross, to ransom a people to be your inheritance. Jesus, you are the faithful promised one. You are our inheritance, and you are the one who has brought us to dwell with God, to dwell in his midst and spirit. You dwell with your people. Fill us up, help us throw off all that which entangles, help us to see those barbs and those thorns and move toward us in love. We give you the glory. Amen.