Numbers 20:1-13 • When You Can't Go Home
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
We are going to the book of Numbers. Any of you, number of you have said to me, how are you gonna get a Christmas sermon out of the book of Numbers?
Well, let's find out. Numbers chapter 20, Numbers chapter 20, as God's people are getting ready to go into the promised land. Remember in the book of Exodus we've been covering, they were out of Egypt, into the wilderness, and now they're getting ready to enter the land of God's promise. Let's stand to honor God's word, Numbers 20, verses one to 13.
In the people of Israel, the whole congregation
came into the wilderness of Zinn in the first month, and the people stayed at Kadesh,
and Miriam died there, and was buried there.
Now there was no water for the congregation, and they assembled themselves together
against Moses and against Aaron.
And the people quarreled with Moses and said, would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord. Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness that we should die here, both we and our cattle?
And why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place?
It is no place for grain, or figs, or vines, or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink.
Then Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting,
and fell on their faces,
and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.
And the Lord spoke to Moses, take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron, your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.
And Moses took the staff from before the Lord as he commanded him. Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them,
here now you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?
And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly.
And the congregation drank and their livestock, and the Lord said to Moses and Aaron,
because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.
These are the waters of Miraba, where the people of Israel coiled with the Lord, and through them he showed himself holy. Let's pray together.
Father, it is a time of year that we want to see the evidences of your goodness.
And we read accounts in scriptures that draw us up short,
but through them you are intending to show us a holiness that has been shared for us.
So by your word, take us to your son. We pray in Jesus name, amen. Please be seated.
In his novel about the bitter sweet of our roots,
Thomas Wolf simply says, "You can't go home again."
Which doesn't stop us from trying.
Last Thanksgiving, 55 million of us got on the road to go home.
And at Christmas, that number will more than double.
Home has amazing magnetic power on us, to draw us to itself. We want to go home again, even if that home doesn't exist in the same way anymore. We're drawn in memory, if not in reality. I think of my own family, the house that we moved from three moves ago. Nonetheless, my wife, Kathy, keeps a box that has in it
the mementos from the magnets on the refrigerator door of the day we moved.
Those mementos reveal various things about us,
particularly her sentiment. But after all, in the refrigerator door, there was a cardinal ticket yet unused.
I'm gonna keep that one.
This is not a good sign. This is a photo claim check from the local camera store. The fact that we still have this is not a good sign of where those photos probably still are.
Also on the refrigerator door, a zitz cartoon.
Give a teen a snack and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fix his own snack and your kitchen will be a wreck forever.
(congregation laughing) Moms are nodding.
There was of course the kids' decoration that was on the refrigerator door. But in our home, there was a rule that if you were going to leave the house before mom or dad got home, you had to leave a note saying where you were. So for our non-locacious son, there is one name of a friend and a phone number. That's the totality of the note.
Our daughter, the kinder gentler sort, says on a napkin because we tended to run out of paper for the notes, "Mom, I went to lunch with the girls. "Call me later."
And then attached to the napkin is a piece of masking tape that says, "Mom, I'm at D groups. "Love ya, Jordan."
Now when Kathy keeps those, it's against the reality that we will never go to that home again.
After all, even when we lived in that house, it was falling down around our ears and five families have lived in that home. Since we were there, it ought to be torn down. We are never going to that home again.
And yet the heart still longs for the connection.
Not just her heart. The hearts of virtually everybody we know. After all, what are the people of Israel doing in this passage? They are heading toward their home.
Now, like the lyrics of a John Denver song, they are going to a home that they've never been before
because it's their ancestral home. The home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They've been in slavery for generations and now these people are going to their, they long for the home of their forefathers, even though they've not been there before. But the reality is that many of them will never get home again.
Many of them cannot get home again. Even their leader, Moses, will not make it home.
There are barriers, not just of distance.
There are barriers of heart that keep their souls from the rest that actually is where home may be found. After all, remember, home is where the heart is.
And as long as their hearts are distant, separated at war with God, they will never find the home that they truly long for. And that's not just true of them. It's true of us as well. What keeps us from the hearts at rest,
which are the home place that we all really desire to be with God?
One thing surely is discontentment with where we are. That keeps us from home.
These people are complaining
because God has not put them in the place they want to be. You know the complaints. First, just complaints about circumstances. Verse three, "Would that we had perished when our brothers perished." Why did their brothers and forefathers perish in the desert? Because they were sinning against God. They rebels against God. "To now say to Moses, it would be better if we had died with our brothers is to say it would be better to die in sin
than to live in the place that God has called us.
And yet that God who has called them is providing for them manna every morning, meet at night, deliverance from enemies, rescue from slavery. They have been provided for every day, morning and evening for 40 years plus.
But they don't perceive it. They are only complaining about what's not right. Verse five, "Why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place?" You gotta be kidding me. You look back to Egypt and you say it was better back there than what you're experiencing now. Do you remember the slavery?
Do you remember the crops that came? Yes, there by the sweat of your brow
and the blood of your children
as they were murdered to keep you slaves. Egypt was better, really?
But what they do is they focus on what's not right in the moment.
And because of that, they do what we always do when we bring our complaints against God. We take inventory of our difficulties
rather than identifying what God has done to bless.
Verse five, at the end, "It is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates and there is no water." Let me give you the inventory. Here's what's not right now.
Forget the manna in the morning. Forget the meat in the evening. This miraba, this place where the water is deprived, we don't know exactly where that was. There are at least 18 different places that the scholars speculate miraba may have been, but any number of them are actually within sight of the Jordan River,
which means all they've got to do is go over the hill, but if they go over the hill to get the water, they will be closer to their enemies and will have to depend upon God's care.
Better to complain than depend on God
and take inventory of what is not right.
It's always the way.
We, if we truly go to the nature of our discontent that keeps our hearts from being at rest at home with God, are inventorying our difficulties. Friends of ours were recently caused to move by difficult circumstances in their life and because of the difficulties that they were facing, they got tense with God, they got tense with each other,
and as one of their disagreements escalated, one at least had the perspective to say, "Wait a second, we need to identify "what we are actually afraid of "that is causing our complaint "and then to identify what truth of God deals with that." And the wife actually said, "Let's just write it down on index cards. "We'll write it down, then we'll trade. "What's causing our fear
"and what's the truth of God that deals with that?"
Fear.
We can't replace the home that we love.
Truth.
God can.
Fear.
We don't know what's ahead of us.
Truth.
God does.
Fear.
We won't have those who care about us as we now do.
Truth.
God says he will never leave us or forsake us.
The process of finding that home for the heart ultimately is focusing off the difficulty, even off of ourselves, and focusing on the reality and the truth of who God is. That's not easy. Paul Tripp writes about it, asking us to ask ourselves hard questions of what is causing our complaint, our discontent that's deep inside. He writes, "Our society sets aside days "to count our blessings and give thanks,
"but our decision to complain as Israel did, "or to give thanks,
"is ultimately rooted in the way that we view ourselves.
"If I assume that I'm basically a good person, "then I'll conclude that I am a deserving person.
"As a deserving person, I will expect the situations "and the locations and the relationships of my life
to fulfill my needs.
But inevitably, in a fallen world, those people and places will fail to cater to, even to recognize my needs.
So since I don't get what I think I deserve, I now believe that I have a right to complain and to grumble." That's certainly what the people of God were doing.
There's no pomegranates. There's no grain, there's no water.
These are valid complaints. But because they have focused on the difficulties, rather than on the God who has provided for them for 40 years and day in and day out, they only have restless hearts that cannot be at home.
And the evidence of that is not only the complaint about circumstances, but the complaint about their leaders.
Where Moses writes about the people complaining about himself, it must have been excruciating.
Hard for us to read, but imagine you were Moses.
I was 80 years old when I started leading this people.
I had given up palace privileges. I had given up a peaceful life with my family as a shepherd. I come now to lead these people. I take them through plagues and crisis and enemy and desert and disaster after disaster. They've rebelled against me. I've stayed faithful to them. And now 40 years of all this.
And what do the people do? Verse two, they assembled against Moses. Verse three, they quarreled with Moses. Verse four, you brought us to die here.
Verse five, you made us come.
The words even more intense when you recognize that, verse three, where it talks about the people began to quarrel against Moses,
is the language that was used in Exodus 17 when their forefathers did the same thing. But they actually took up stones to stone Moses as they complained against him. What are they saying?
We are in a terrible spot. There are no pomegranates.
And we're mad about it.
And we are going to hurt you as best we're able because things are not turning out the way that we expected.
They are not just the words of an ancient people.
You and I recognize we're in a terrible spot and it's your fault.
It can be the words in the church or in a family or in a company or to your own spouse.
We're in a terrible spot and it's your fault.
How do we deal with that? I mean, honestly, sometimes leaders make bad decisions. We may have a right to complain. But what you perceive in this passage is the vehemence of the complaint.
They are ready to take it out on Moses that it's not going the way that they expected. And the reality is, while everything they're saying is perfectly true, no pomegranates, no grain, no water, that they are simply neglecting the blessings that have come their way. Mana every morning, meat every night, the Jordan River just over the hill.
You begin to recognize that the vehemence cannot be explained by their circumstances.
The vehemence is not a result of what's outside of them, it's a result of what's inside of them.
And that's something that is inside of them. Paul Tripp helps us to examine with questions that are themselves excruciating for us to answer.
He writes, "If you are to discern your own discontent, you must ask, would the people who live nearest to you characterize you as a complaining person or a thankful person?
Do you view yourself as one who has been continuously shortchanged and neglected in life?
In your relationships and conversations, do you find yourself frequently tearing others down?
How often do you take inventory of your difficulties by saying, if I only had x, whatever that is, I would be happy. If only this had not happened, we would be fulfilled.
If only our leaders were better, we would be better off.
If so and so were different, my life would be more like I expected."
It's actually that last one that caught me up short because it is almost word for word what a close relative of mine said as he was leaving his wife.
"I'm just not where I expected to be in this phase of my life," he said.
So he's leaving his wife and his home to find a place and a person that will satisfy. And with sadness I say to you, he will not find it because until our hearts are at peace with God, we cannot find that home. It does not exist. Where does our present contentment come from? It comes from that place where the Apostle Paul could say, "I have found in whatever state I am therewith to be content." Wait, Paul, you're in prison.
You're being beaten. You're being whipped. You're being rejected by your brethren. You're being betrayed by those who like—what do you mean you're content? And you begin to discover that the Apostle Paul was also discerning that it's not what's going on around him that makes his heart at home with God. It's what's going on inside of him. Paul tripped again, "What if instead of assuming that I'm a good and deserving person, I view myself through the lens of Scripture?
What if I remember the humbling truth that I'm not a morally justified or right person? In fact, I am deserving of the wrath of God even in this life.
What if I remember that God, in an act of outrageous grace, turned his face of mercy and kindness towards me and that every good thing in my life is an undeserved blessing?"
What if these people had done that? What if the people of God would say, "You know, actually it's true there's no pomegranates. Actually, it's true there's no grain here. And in fact, there's no water that's immediately here. But if they had perceived, and yet if we do not draw another breath beyond this day, we are eternally secure in the covenant of God. We are made right with him forever. We have had our salvation provided for by a God who rescued us from slavery and secures our future eternally. If not another right thing happens in my life, I am blessed before God."
If that was their perspective, what would be the evidences in them, in us?
Paul Tripp again, "In your relationships, do you find yourself frequently building others up, giving them cause to encourage others and their leaders?
Do you often speak, think, and pray with gratitude like, "I can't believe God has given me such blessings – my spouse, my health, my family, my home."
Do you view yourself as one who has been unfairly showered with blessings?
That God just keeps pouring out on someone who does not deserve it – eternity and heaven and grace and forgiveness and his faithfulness, even when we are unfaithful to him. If we perceive life that way, instead of grumbling and complaining, we begin to become these fountains of grace. We perceive the goodness of God and we want to share it and we want other people to hear about it, even when our circumstances are terribly difficult.
I think of the testimony of the young missionary John Alan Chow, who was killed just a few days ago on the Sentinel Island. Did you read about that?
The first visit he made, you may remember, he tried to proclaim the name of Jesus and was met with arrows being shot at him, one of which his Bible itself took for him.
He went back.
According to his journal, he knew what could happen.
He wrote, "Would it be wiser to leave and let someone else continue? I don't think so. Why not? It's worth the risk to declare Jesus to these people." And he wrote to his own friends and family at home, "Please do not be angry with them or God if I am killed.
Rather live your lives in obedience to God, whatever he is called you to, because I will see you again."
He knew the heavenly security, if he did not draw another breath, God had been good to him and to family and to those who would hear of the gospel through him. And it was that radiating understanding from the inside of the goodness of God for his soul and spirit and heart that made him at home with God, even on an island far away,
under risk such as most of us cannot even imagine.
He understood that ultimately his home with God was being content with where he was.
But we recognize it's not just our location that's often the problem, what keeps us from being at home.
It is anger at the ones who are there with us.
What if the first arrow that had been shot at John Chow had caused the reaction of his heart of saying, "How dare they? I've planned for this for years. I've sacrificed my good. I've sacrificed my future. I've come here to minister to you and you turn on me."
Every right to anger.
But instead he seeks their good.
The difficulty of that may not be obvious in this passage, but it's right there in the very first verse at the end. The little notation, "And Miriam died there and was buried there." Most of us remember Miriam from the early account in Moses' life. Remember when he was in the Moses boat and in the bull rushes, floated down the Nile River and his sister hid in the rushes to find out when Pharaoh's daughter came what would happen to her little brother? That was Miriam.
But years later, just a few chapters earlier in this very book, when Miriam herself has gotten tired of Moses' leadership and the difficulty in the desert, she says to the people, "Make Aaron and me your head. You don't need Moses anymore.
We'll take over for you."
And she betrays her brother.
Moses actually prays that God will forgive her. And God grants Miriam life, continued, and Moses continued leadership. But now she's died. And those of you who have buried those with whom your hearts are tense know what's happening now as the grief brings up the anger which increases the grief.
And Moses is going through all of that.
His heart wants to go home, but there are barriers.
I can tease Kathy about keeping the little mementos. I'm no better.
Just a few weeks ago before Thanksgiving, I said to her, "Listen, would you call my Aunt Ramona that is the last surviving sibling of my father's generation?" And I say, "Before she's gone, get the recipe for my grandmother's biscuits and how you make green beans with hog jowl.
And what was the way they made the eggnog that we like so much? I mean, I don't want those things to pass from my life. I want to keep connecting even to that home." Even if you were to come into our house now in our dining room, the table that we have is the table that my family gathered around at my grandparents' farm that we always had the Christmas meals at. That's the one I saw. In my memory's eye, I can actually see where every relative would sit and where there was that little container of flavoring in the middle of the table for the eggnog.
You had to be 21 before you could use the flavoring.
But by the time the flavoring was passed, you could assess whether that Christmas meal was going to be a blessing or a curse.
Because by that time, the conversation would have moved either to my father's high school basketball exploits or the passing of some community figure in the region that the family needed to know about or the price of soybeans or the reason my parents weren't speaking to each other.
Or maybe one of them would not even be present.
Or the coded words that little children didn't get but all the adults knew were meant to hurt and to cut and to be arrows at your heart.
The coded words like, "It would have been better for us never to come here.
Why did you bring us here?
This is a terrible spot that we're in and you did it. You're a failure.
I expected better from you.
I expected better from God.
And any number of us know those arrows that create the anger in us that keep our hearts from settling in the home that God intends."
Moses couldn't settle this time. He's heard these complaints before. Some of you know this is the Yogi Berra experience, right? This is deja vu all over again, right? This is exactly the same thing their parents said, the way the rock was hit to bring out what I mean, 40 years ago with the parents, this has all happened before. And now it's happening again.
But Moses' response is so different. He's old now.
And he's grieving.
And he's just tired.
And he can't let it go.
And so God tells to him, "Speak to the rock. What does Moses do instead?"
He strikes the rock repeatedly. Think about what that means. It's like a ball player upset with his trip to the plate, begins to wail away at the water cooler.
Or the mom, an exasperation who takes the Christmas plate and just throws it on the floor.
Or the dad who curses family, spouse, and child for the career change that has happened over which his family has no control.
Moses does it with the rod that's supposed to express the blessing and the power of God.
And he uses it to curse the very family of God.
What's he reminding us of? How difficult it is to deal with the complaints of the past as we're trying to find our home in the present. I mean, different believers struggle with different sin. There are those who sow glory in the past that they can't let go of the glories of the past.
But there are others who can't let go of the grievances of the past.
They just hang on.
And so they can't ever really go home with the people that God has put them to know his grace, to know his favor, to know his heart. We can't let it go. And we think somehow they are being damaged with our own hearts that are being kept from the home with friend and family and God that he intends.
It's no mystery that later in Israel's history as the nation of Babylon has come and destroyed Israel and taken them into slavery again, that God says to that people who should have every right to be angry and upset with those who have enslaved them, pray for the peace and the prosperity of the city to which you have been called.
Why they're awful people. All true.
But your own heart cannot find its home with God.
If the anger is residual, if the pain won't be let go, if the grievance is kept.
And so the Lord says, pray for others. That can be really tough, really tough. I mean, we praise the missionaries who sacrifice funds and future and career for the sake of ministering to those at great distance. But we forget sometimes the hardest place to be a missionary is in your family.
Sometimes the hardest place to be a missionary is in the church that has failed you, that is full of broken, sinful people who have not treated you right. And to pray for the peace and the prosperity of the people, to actually see this is my mission now. These are the people I'm being called not just to sit among, but to love and to cherish and to be a witness for the good of Christ. These people who have hurt and damaged us, who give the hard words, who have all the grievances rightly lodged against them, they are the ones to whom we are being called to minister in Christ's name. And if we can't do that, we can't find the home of worship and heart that God calls us to.
Ultimately, you recognize it's not just a problem of complaining about location. It's not even ultimately anger at who is there. What's keeping the heart from home ultimately is forgetting whose we are.
Deep in this account are Christmas gifts buried. As God is saying to each one of us, "I want you to remember whose you are."
Yes, awful things happen here. Moses is denied entry into the Promised Land. You can't think, "Why is that? I've been through this before, so I won't belabor it." Do you remember? God has said to Moses, "Listen, take my staff and speak to the rock." What does He do? He takes the staff and strikes the rock. But He does speak. He speaks to the people and says, "Shall we deliver you, you rebels?"
God has never told Him to say that.
What happens is He becomes a prophet of His own words.
And when this happened in the preceding generation in Exodus 17, do you remember that God in all of His glory stood before the rock in the posture of a servant so that in order to strike the rock, Moses had to strike God who would humble Himself to deliver His people.
Now Moses strikes the rock in rage. I don't know. Is the Shekinah glory still there? Is He beating God as much as He's beating the rock?
Whatever it is, He's taking the credit. Shall we give you water? As though it's not now God mediating in humility for the good of His people, it's Moses who's the magician who's mediating the good of the people. He not just is a prophet of Himself, He's a priest for His own work, as though His rigor and His righteousness will provide for the people. And He does it all with the staff of God in His hand, as though He has the authority, as though He is the King of His own action and the King of these people. He calls Himself by His actions prophet, priest, and King of Israel. And there is only one person in all of history who can claim to be all in one prophet, priest, and King of Israel who is that. That is Jesus.
Moses claims to be the Messiah. He gives Himself the status and the stature of God, and God who cares for Moses and cares for the people says, "Moses, if you are going to claim to be their God, you cannot take them into the promised land.
That is not good for you, and it is not good for them."
My what a Christmas message.
The people messed up, and Moses messed up. All right, go home, be blessed.
Is that the end?
No, there are gifts under the tree. There are ways for us to go deeper in and see how God is providing. Verse 11 is so beautiful. Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and the water came out in a little bitty stream of almost nothing. Is that what it says? The water came out abundantly.
Listen, the book of Numbers that we're reading is talking about the faithfulness of God. The early chapters number the people who came out of Egypt. The later chapter number the people who are going into the promised land. In that four decades of separation, what you find out is the number of God's people has actually grown.
600,000 fighting men warriors came out of Egypt. If you say, "What about their spouses and their children and their grandchildren and their flocks and their herds?" There are these four to six million entities that have to be provided water in the desert. You take everybody in Peoria and all the surrounding areas and you multiply it by 10. And that's the number of people you've got to provide water for. This is not a little trickle. This is tanker trucks per minute coming out of the rock. As God is saying, "You have been faithless, but I will be faithful. You are not deserving and I give you water in abundance. You deserve no mercy. I provide it abundantly."
That's the God with whom we have to deal. Now I know you're still worried about Moses. Yeah, those are the people. What about poor Moses?
All those years of faithfulness and now a little temper tantrum.
And he doesn't get in the promised land.
Oh really?
What does Moses teach us?
After all, if you read this awful account of the awful Moses, you have to ask yourself, who wrote this down? Who rats on Moses?
Moses.
He's the one telling us of his own failures.
And he will continue to write God's Word and will ultimately write to lead the people of God, not just into the promised land, but to an understanding of the Messiah who will come. God is still using him beyond all of his messed up life.
I learned something there about the relationship between Moses and God. You know, in my family, as my siblings and I began to have children, our pattern would still go back to my parents' home.
And during that Christmas break, as we began having our children, we would put the children in bread and then to connect with siblings and their spouses, we would play monopoly late into the night.
And you know, the later you play, the gitter you get and the looser your tongue and the more unwise your comments.
So that my parents who were typically sitting on the side would begin to hear accounts of our misdeeds and mischief when we were teens that they had never heard before. My mom would say, "You did what?"
But we could tell why because we knew it was okay now.
Why can Moses talk about his own misdeeds?
Because something deep down is saying, "It's okay now.
I can't be a God to these people, but I can teach them about humility and a God who will yet care for them." Is there any evidence that God keeps caring?
The very Messiah that Moses prophesied will one day come. And before he becomes that priest upon a cross offering himself in sacrifice, he goes upon a mountaintop in the promised land.
And there two figures appear with him in a cloud on the mountaintop, one to show that all the prophets of the past are pointing toward this Messiah. Who is that figure that appears with Jesus in the cloud seeing, "This is the Messiah we prophesied." Who is that prophet? That's Elijah.
And then there's someone else that appears in the cloud to say, "And the law, which we could not keep, that testified to the need of this Messiah." There's another figure that appears in the cloud with Jesus on the mountain in the promised land. And who is that other figure?
That is Moses. He gets in. He gets home. He gets to the place where God was calling him. It has been God saying, "I am so generous, my heart so gracious, I will receive even this Moses who vied with me for power and glory."
And he's home now.
Why do you and I need to know that?
Because our hearts struggle to be at home this time of year.
Sometimes because of discontent with where we are.
Sometimes because of anger of who's with us.
And sometimes simply because we have forgotten who's we are.
The God who received these people and gave them water.
The God who received Moses and gave him a place in his home.
Sometime this Christmas season, you're going to go to a Christmas meal or party.
And you're going to come up to a front door. And as you're getting in that front door, there's going to be darkness and wind and snow and cold behind you.
And as soon as the door opens, you're going to see that there's warmth and light and presence and the smell of cookies.
And as you walk in the door and somebody's taking your coat and coat of your spouse, if you can just pause for a moment and think, you know, this is the way Jesus treats me. Back there is my sin and my circumstance in all their horror.
But here's Jesus receiving me into warmth and light and sweetness. And if you just pause for a moment, say, this is how Jesus treats me.
You're going to hear a voice that whispers to your heart.
It will be Jesus.
And he will say, welcome home.
Father, take our hearts home by the work of your son.
Where we struggle and there's much cause for our struggle, teach us of the one who prepared a place for us, not just in the future, but even now when we rest in you.
Not blaming person or circumstance, not blaming you, but rejoicing in the extravagant grace
that put gifts not just under the tree, but in all of history so that I could see a God who would welcome me, even me, home.
So bless us, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.