The Wandering: Making a Way

Intro - Discussing previously this series as the time of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness and how we can relate to their lostness, being a chosen people, in between prior slavery to sin and our promised rest. There are a number of emotions, experiences, and behaviors that can happen. One of them that we’ll talk about today is that in our discomfort and frustration, we can try to make a way out. So we’ll talk about that here in Num. 14:39-45. First we’ll discuss that although God may desire to bless us, timing is essential..

The Timing

Wandering in the wilderness is an emotional journey just as much as it is a physical and spiritual one.

This is often underestimated.

When people feel lost, hopeless, and that there is no way out, they have a tendency to try to MAKE a way.

Through sheer effort and fortitude they attempt anything that they can to enter into the place that they feel they lost or once were about to inherit.

Here we see the same thing

Numbers 14:39 ESV

When Moses told these words to all the people of Israel, the people mourned greatly.

What were they mourning? They were mourning, not that they had sinned against God, not that they had not trusted in Him, rather that their promised comfort was going to be delayed.

One central truth that we see about God in this passage is that there is the promise of God and then there is the timing of God and when faith, promise, and timing align then there is prosperity.

One of the things that I laugh about and miss most about my mom is her horrible sense of rhythm. I loved her dearly but she could not have been more off rhythm if she tried. I’ll never forget the time that I invited her to my old church, it was a predominantly black church where rhythm and dance is considered a spiritual discipline. As we sang and danced there was this clap that sounded like a shot going off during all the wrong beats. And there my mama was, happy as can be, clapping loud as she could with her worn hands. I literally grabbed her hands and tried to get her to clap on beat and it wasn’t any use. She believed she could clap, she new it was the thing to do…but her timing was off and it made for both a comical and distracting event.

And here you have the Israelites…they now had faith that they could overcome, they knew that the land was promised to them but their timing was off and their consequences were far more devastating.

Family, one of the areas we have to be careful of during this season of wandering in this wilderness is where our emotions drive us.

Here, the mourning was so great that they presumed upon God and it devastated them.

This environment tells you to rush....it provokes an emotion and then tells you to immediately act upon it…let me tell you that that is the way of the fool.

While there are times for immediate action they are rare. There are things that God may desire for you and then there is the time for which He desired it.

Some of us will search for a spouse, search for a job, search for peace, and the moment that we get a semblance of it we think that we’ve arrived when in fact the actual fulfillment of it won’t come for some time.

Yet, our emotions grip us. Here’s the amazing thing about our flesh. It can’t discern that what once was the sin now has become the righteousness.

What do I mean? Before, God wanted them to go up immediately to take the land and waiting was their sin…now God wanted them to remain and going up immediately was the sin.

The only way to discern the difference isn’t by listening to the crowd or to your emotions, it’s by listening to God and taking into account the full counsel of His word....

TR: By dealing with the truth...

The Truth

Here’s the truth…delayed obedience is disobediance.

If God says be reconciled…then you ought to be reconciled. If God says to press forward, to trust, to give, love, forgive…then He is not asking for you to do it in your timing....

We often feel as though He is giving us time to get around to it because He has given us grace but in fact it is His grace…not His aquiescience to our desires.

The most important truth that the Israelites forgot in the wilderness…that was drowned out by their emotions and mourning…was that they could only succeed where God was located.

Numbers 14:41–42 ESV

But Moses said, “Why now are you transgressing the command of the Lord, when that will not succeed? Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, lest you be struck down before your enemies.

Because of their delayed obedience, God’s command changed.

There comes a time when the discomfort, annoyance, heartache becomes so great that to relieve it you will even believe you can force God’s hand.

I know there have been times when, contrary to the behavior by these Israelites, I have done things correctly, I have been obedient, and yet I was homeless. I was poor. And I was despairing wondering why God didn’t prosper me. Yet the prospering wasn’t in the comfort but was in the obedience to the Lord. I remember when I left college after my freshman year. I had just gotten saved, felt led to come back to KC, and yet I had no job, no place to stay, no money. I bounced around from house to house, getting kicked off of people’s couch’s, being humiliated at certain places with getting my stuff thrown outside, etc. I came to a point where I was sleeping on a loveseat on the bottom floor of a building the church owned. I lived out of a suitcase and would scrap together some money from benevolent people to eat until I found a job. I was obedient to the Lord but I felt alone. Stripped of all dignity. No matter how much I tried…I couldn’t change my situation. That wilderness was God-ordained.

There are times when the truth of the matter is God wants you where you are and it hurts. You want to be FREE of it.

I could’ve went out and made money…but I wanted to be obedient…even when that obedience brought discomfort. Yet best believe that everything in me told me to take that hill, fight that battle, and FORCE my way out of this situation.

I’ve seen this many time in certain marriages that believe that somehow divorce will bring happenness, or people that believe a new location will bring new opportunity, or a new church will bring greater growth, etc.

Somehow, if I just force my way into a situation, even if God didn’t call me there (and sometimes explicitly is against it in Scripture), I will find happiness.

Imagine what that must have been like as they stormed that hill…the joy, the focus, the belief that “yeah…we’re going to do this”…I mean to rush into battle you have to convince yourself of some things.

You have to believe in your efforts that they’re going to yield results! Your emotions at this point have intoxicated you and we don’t realize that God is back at camp and we’re out here on our own.

That’s the deception of this world…the deception of pursuing a false god of fleshly comfort…in desiring more the gifts of God’s hands rather than God.

Who were the Israelites serving in that moment? Themselves!! And yet THEY BELIEVED THAT THEY WERE DOING GOD’S WORK!!!

There are some of us now that are fighting battles outside of camp, trying to take a hill believing comfort is just on the other side…if we can just push through the battle…and God’s like...”COME BACK TO CAMP!!!”

TR: If you don’t there’s going to be a devastating trial you’re going to go through...

The Trial

And that’s exactly what they faced!

Numbers 14:44–45 ESV

But they presumed to go up to the heights of the hill country, although neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses departed out of the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them and pursued them, even to Hormah.

They fooled themselves into believing that they were doing righteousness when in fact they were disobedying God....

Some folks are supporting movements, responses, politicians, personal positions, personal behaviors, etc. all believing you’re doing something righteous and God is back at camp...

I’m not saying that voting for one person or another or protesting or not protesting is wrong…but be very careful what hill you’re willing to die on…hopefully it’ll be one that God is with you on.

Meanwhile you’re in the thick of the trial and can’t find your way out....

These emotions while wandering can be powerful things…the Israelites left their God and their leadership…with the belief that they were righteous

I’m concerned that at times some of us do the same…then we deal with the consequences.

We’re defeated…chased away…fleeing for our lives…reeling.

It’s amazing to me how our country can have some many people pursuing “righteousness” but so many people fearing defeat...

The Israelites left the identifier of God’s presence, the ark of the covenant, and their leader Moses, back at camp and somehow believed they’d still be victorious.

What’s even more frightening is what if God would have given them that victory…void of His presence? What manner of people would that have created?

So I’ll leave you with these words...”come back to camp!”....God is waiting for you here.

I know you’re in pain, I know you’re mourning, frustrated, scared, confused, angry…come BACK TO CAMP!!!

Don’t run out ahead of God…stop trying to force your way into comfort, peace, and pleasure.

What’s interesting…is that after this defeat of the Israelites…the very next chapter is God teaching them about how to be righteous before Him...

It would seem, that God is more concerned with our righteousness than our passion. He values our obedience over our emotion...

If you lack peace come back to camp. If you lack joy…come back to camp. If you don’t understand…come back to camp…stop trying to make a way…when God has already made one…through submission to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.