Numbers 20:1-13 • It’s Hard to Obey God and Be God - Part 2
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
From Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, this is In the Covenant of Grace. Here's the president of Covenant Seminary, Dr. Brian Chappell.
Those of you who are in counseling, those of you who are pastors working in churches now, you are dealing with the consequences of unraveled culture. You are more and more wrestling with people who truly need to be delivered from deep besetting compulsive sin in their lives. And we will not be able to minister to such people. We will not have them able to come to us if occasionally we are not able to say to people, I make mistakes. Yes, I messed up, but God can still use me, and He still has a purpose for you.
The mission of Covenant Theological Seminary is to train servants of the Triune God that they might walk with Him and learn to interpret and communicate God's Word, to lead God's people that they would be living in the Covenant of Grace.
Today, Dr. Brian Chappell comes to part 2 of the message entitled, "It's Hard to Obey God and Be God." There is one in nearly every office, every neighborhood, and in every church. Who are they? They are the people who believe they are never wrong, that they don't make mistakes. Well, the truth is we all make mistakes, and God uses our mistakes for good.
Well, stay with us as we examine just how the Lord did that in the life of Moses.
The scripture text for today's teaching is from Numbers chapter 20, verses 1 through 13.
Now once again, here's Dr. Brian Chappell with today's broadcast beef entitled, "It's Hard to Obey God and Be God."
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not trust in Me enough to honor Me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring them into this community, into the land." I give them.
I mean, I know it wasn't just exactly what God said, but it doesn't seem that wrong.
It doesn't seem so wrong that God would say, "Now you, Moses, having led faithfully, sacrificed, put yourself at risk over and over again just because you didn't do this little thing exactly the right way," that God says, "Now you, Moses, cannot enter the promised land." I mean, it just seems like some personal initiative, but in that initiative is really the key to what is so wrong and tells us how we might really end up substituting ourselves for God in positions of leadership.
What does Moses do that is so wrong?
He substitutes words that God does not give. That's the first thing.
God says, "Speak to the rock and it will pour forth water." It's actually to be consolation to God's people. Those are the words that are to come. And instead the words that come out of Moses are condemnation.
You rebels. Now, I confess that what they were doing was wrong, but the words that God had given Moses to say were those of consolation even in their sin. And all they hear from this leader is condemnation. He becomes an originator of words not given by God, and therefore he takes to himself an office of profit that God has not given.
But it really is worse than that because of the little action that he does of taking up this staff and striking the rock.
Now, God didn't tell him to do that, remember? He was only supposed to speak. It was to be obvious to all the people that there was not a human action, not a human contribution to what was now going to come out of blessing for the people of God.
Even more striking, if this account sounds familiar to you, when you remember where this did happen before with that generation of complainers that is specified by Miriam, remember her death as mentioned in the very first verse?
There's Miriam, that generation that complained, that did what was so wrong. If you look back at Exodus 17, you'll see what that generation did and how they were spoken to by God back then.
And Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 saying, "We, the Israelites, drink of the same spiritual rock that we do, and that rock is Christ."
This is the image of God giving himself for men, letting his glory be struck, humiliating himself that their sin would be covered. And now Moses, at a later time, before the eyes of God's people, is willing to strike the rock himself by his own hand without the mediation and intercession of God. He simply says, "This now depends on me. I am your Redeemer. I am the one who will cause the rock to give forth its water. Must we," he says of himself an Aaron, "must we bring water out of this rock for you."
Moses has suddenly not just merely become prophet, he has become priest of a new mediator, his own power to save the people.
When God had already provided his own humiliation to save the people.
And it's not the end.
For Moses does all this holding the staff of God in his hand. The very staff that parted the waters, the very staff that was the rule of God before the eyes of the people, he says, "I have other words and I have other mediation before God." And he claims it with the authority of God himself in his hand.
He has become another prophet and he has become another priest and he has become another king.
Moses, God alone can hold all in his own being.
That is why God would say in the 12th verse, "You did not regard me as holy.
You took for yourself more than you ever could and ever should have." Of course, as we see that, we say, "How could that possibly be?" We would recognize that there are lessons for us simply in ministry that in our ministry our resolve would be. There will be no other words than God's word, no other mediator than Christ, no other king,
but our Lord and Savior.
But Moses would have said that. Come on, he's the writer of the deck log, the 10 commandments. He knows no other God before God.
What happened to Moses?
Well, we don't have to look far.
Verse 3 through 5 tell us that the people quarreled with Moses. Verse 4, "They accused him." Why did you bring the Lord's community in this place? Verse 5, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt to this place? There is no water to drink." They're accusing him and he gets mad. That's what's wrong.
The psalmist in the 106 Psalms says simply, "Moses used rash words.
They acted against him. They didn't give him the respect that was due him and so he got mad.
And as a result, he began to take to himself credit and give instruction and authority that was not his to give."
We think it would never happen to us.
Happens easily, quickly.
On the way that I used to go to church when I was a child growing up, there was always a golf course on our way and it was a time for those of us who were holy to kind of observe those people who were desecrating the Sabbath by playing golf on Sunday mornings and not going to church where we were. And I can remember kind of looking out at that kind of grassy field of the golf course and just kind of observing it as kind of the den of iniquity that I knew it had to be.
Was it really into my very far adult years that I recognized there was another child who was observing that golf course every Sunday with a very different impression? He's now a friend of mine and we had taken the same route to church growing up.
He said that when he would go by in his family's car, that golf course, every Sunday morning,
he would look out at the green with the quiet and the tranquility and he would force his mind out of the car to that promised land of peace because there was war going on inside the car.
Every Sunday, he said, as the day would begin, typically sheets were yanked off the bed and with accusation and slaps and spanks, children were gotten out of bed.
You lazy children.
We are going to be late again.
I will look bad. Don't you know I'm a seminary student. How are we going to get a job if the people in the church don't respect me? That I don't look good before them.
It wasn't just the children, it was the wife who also got in trouble.
And the later they got, the more the tirade and the anger would build all the way to church to hear of the grace of God under the anger of a man who was saying things like, you damaged me.
You need me, but you don't give me respect.
And I need that respect in order to be able to minister God to others.
It does happen.
I recognize it happens to me how easy it is when accused to want to accuse back, to take the gospel, the word of consolation that God has given, and want to accuse my accusers.
And I know in me there is the great desire at times to say, well, if you're going to punch that way, I'm going to punch that way. It's very easy to do and very tempting.
And to hold myself accountable, to hold this faculty, to hold you and students and all of us to say the only word that we have, the only word that we have and have a right to say is the word of the gospel that is in Christ Jesus.
And if that is not enough to protect us, then we really have nothing else to say. Because I'm not the mediator and this institution is not the mediator. All that we have is our Lord to look to. And we will testify of Him. And if that is not enough, if we perish, we perish.
But this is what we will say. And we are under that authority and no other to do it. We will be ruled by King Jesus and the words of His gospel and we will hold up to the world His gospel of grace and that is our only message.
It doesn't mean that we don't stand with integrity. It doesn't mean we won't stand with courage. But this is all we have and we will stand for it.
Now that gospel of grace isn't always easy to maintain, particularly when you think what happened to Moses.
I mean you and I both recognize that not only is Moses substituting his human leadership for God, this count isn't really going to help us because we see what ultimately happens to Moses until we recognize that what God has to do is substitute Himself for flawed human leadership.
I love verse 11.
"Moses raised his arm, struck the rock twice with his staff." Now recognize that is the wrong thing to do. It is blasphemous in action itself. But what happens?
Water gushed out and the community and their livestock drank. God provides for his people despite flawed leadership. I mean that's a wonderful message of God's grace that I need over and over again. The gushing is hard for us to kind of take in with the images that are usually put before us in the Sunday school books that we get year after year and that we were raised on as children. I mean I think of the three camels and the two cows and the two lambs and the twelve people who gathered by the little stream.
But now think for a moment, 600,000 fighting men left Egypt and their families and their livestock. Now I don't know how many have died in the desert and how the next generation has reproduced itself, but by any estimation there are hundreds of thousands more than the people you will see in this entire day, any of you, are drinking at this water. And it's not just them but their livestock. I mean I've just done some quick math and it seems to me even conservatively there's a thousand gallons a minute that have to be coming out of this rock to provide for this many people and their livestock.
I mean you know in this little stream it's kind of going, God is saying, "Gushed out!" You know here's this huge blessing coming over God's people as a result of Moses' mistake.
I need that. I need to remember that when I have failed, when I look back at my own actions and words, that God can still draw a straight line with a crooked stick. He can still accomplish his good purposes. And it's not just in leadership of an institution. I need to recognize as a parent, as a husband, that I recognize the wrong things that I have done.
And I will simply not be able to continue to lead if I don't believe that in my fallibility God can yet sovereignly overrule and still bless his people.
My six-year-old daughter, I have some older teens and then a tag-along six-year-old, my six-year-old daughter went to a neighbor's house that I had told her not to go to because we were getting ready to go somewhere.
She went anyway. And when I found her and brought her back, how do I say this to you easily? She resisted me.
I'm a seminary president.
I have raised older children. I know how this goes. It made me so mad.
And I overreacted to my daughter, so much so that I had to go to her that evening and say, "Honey, I have to ask your forgiveness. You were wrong."
But I was wrong too.
I overreacted. I got too mad.
Now, you know, I could eat myself up for days about things like that.
And I need God to tell me, "Yes, you were wrong, but I'm still sovereign, and I still bless my people despite your mistakes." You will make mistakes as parents, as spouses, as leaders of God's people. You'll give the wrong advice as counselors. You'll give the wrong lesson as teachers. You will make mistakes.
How good to know that God can still bless his people through flawed leaders.
But what about Moses?
God also blesses flawed leaders despite their flaws. It's hard for that to see. Our eyes kind of catch on verse 12 where God simply says, "You'll not go, Moses. You won't go into the Promised Land."
Well, I want him to have a second chance.
I want God to relent.
You know what happened here?
It took me a while to kind of think where the grace is in this passage.
Then I have to remember, well, who tells us that Moses messed up?
Who rats on Moses?
Moses.
This is Moses' book. Moses is telling us about his mistake. You know, we'll go home, and I'll be with my siblings. Some point late in the night, after the second or third game of Monopoly, and the kids are all in other rooms and something, we'll kind of get tired enough to kind of let down our defenses and the stories will start among my brothers and my sister. We'll start talking about younger days of mischief.
Some things that my parents are just now finding out about, you know.
And the reason we tell those things now, even about ourselves, is we know it's okay.
We're able to say what went wrong, what we did bad, because we know it's okay.
What does it say when Moses could tell us of such huge mistake that he made?
Now he knows it's okay.
And we know it too. It is true that God does not let him lead the people of God into the promised land in such a way that Moses now appears to be the mediator, that Moses appears to be the one who will get the credit. I mean, God has, there is a real consequence here to the wrong leadership of Moses. Moses can't lead God's people down a wrong path now that would be imposed if Moses appears to be the one who will now get the credit for what God alone can receive the credit. It's not that God is done with Moses.
I mean, yeah, there are a few hundred thousand people that Moses doesn't lead in the promised land, but who does he lead now? By these words, "To you and to me and to a thousand generations before us."
And maybe if the Lord tares millions of people more.
God has used Moses to say you can make terrible mistakes and God can still use you. His purpose isn't done with you. There's a wonderful grace in God's confirming in Moses' confession God's continuing purpose for Moses. I need to know that and you need to know that, that God sometimes still uses people who make terrible mistakes for whom things don't go right all the time. You know, the previous president before me at Covenant Seminary had a wonderful run, great years of tremendous growth for this institution. And I will tell you when I became president, that was very intimidating, you know, to have to follow in those steps.
And what I have found as I have become president that sometimes what has encouraged me the most are not his successes, but his failures.
I know he got in trouble for that. I know not everybody liked him over there. There were people who were upset with that. So when I run into those things, I said, "You know, it didn't go all right for him either. I'm not so wrong. I'm not in so much trouble because things happen to him too."
And we need as leaders of God's people to be able to say that from time to time.
You know, I think of what divisions in our country and the great differences of morals and principles and values and you recognize that so much that is being reflected is the unraveling of culture, the unraveling of families that we are now the generation that is living out. And more and more, those of you who are in counseling, those of you who are pastors or working in churches now, you are dealing with the consequences of unraveled culture. You are more and more wrestling with people who truly need to be delivered from deep, besetting, compulsive sin in their lives.
And we will not be able to minister to such people. We will not have them able to come to us. If occasionally we are not able to say to people, "I yelled at my six-year-old when I shouldn't have and I'm a seminary president."
I make mistakes.
You do.
And so we need each other at times in our vulnerabilities to say like Moses, "Yes, I messed up, but God can still use me and he still has a purpose for you. This needs to be dealt with. It needs to be worked on." We recognize so much even today the difficulty we have coming to each other because of the expectations of what we are supposed to live up to and who we are supposed to be so that we can't tell each other about our marriage problems and about our lust problems, about our finance problems. I can't tell them that. But you know we can if we know everybody is vulnerable, if we know that everybody needs the grace of God.
Steve Brown tells the wonderful little story about a girl that came home from school one day and she kind of walked in the door and went, "Boys!" And her dad kind of whatever said, "Well, honey, what's wrong?" And she said, "Boys!
What did boys do?" And she said that a boy had that day at school brought a particular issue of Sports Illustrated put out once a year.
And she said the boys had stood in the corner looking at the pictures and kind of laughing and snickering and then making comments at the girls.
Now the father said there was something very safe that he could have done. He could have kind of said, "Well, honey, you know, that's the nature of boys. Girls are kind of, you know, they're relationally oriented and guys are kind of visually oriented." You know, it's kind of just the difference. But he decided something very unsafe.
He said, "Honey, you know your daddy is a boy too." "Oh, no, daddy. No, not you. No, honey, really.
Your daddy is a boy too." Now some of you will question his having said that. I'm not sure of all how the conversation went, but I recognize that the very unsafe thing that that father did was, he said to a daughter, "Honey, I need redemption too. I'm not so good that I'm beyond the sins of this world. Even I require someone greater than I to make me okay with God. I'm not saying we would say it every day and all the time, but sometime in our ministries people need to know of our humanity so that they do know of the Savior all humans need. May God so lead you that none of us substitute ourselves for God, but always our hands are pointing away from self and to Him." Yes, friend. Yes, son. Yes, people. I need the Savior too. Everyone does. Pray with me. Father, I would pray for us as a community of your people that where there is sin in our lives that we fear that we cannot confess or put forward or share. That by our vulnerability with each other that you would strengthen us. As more and more we are able to acknowledge before one another, we too need you.
Don't substitute yourself for God. We need to remember that we all need a Savior and that Savior is Jesus Christ.
If you have benefited from the teaching on today's "In the Covenant of Grace" with Brian Chappell, audio copies of this teaching are available. Request a broadcast entitled "It's Hard to Obey God and Be God."
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