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Leader Guide ESV, Unit 7, Session 1
© 2018 LifeWay Christian Resources, Permission granted to reproduce and distribute within the license agreement with purchaser, edited by Rev. Lex DeLong, M.A.
Summary and Goal
God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt, provided for them in the wilderness, and brought them to the promised land.
God demonstrated His patience and faithfulness over and over again.
The Israelites’ failure to trust God and enter into the land He was giving them was not a small misstep but outright rebellion against Him.
However, Israel was not alone in their rebellion.
The nations of Canaan, from their ancestors to their inhabitants lived in outright rebellion against God revealed to them.
Even more, the nations of the world today rebel against God revealed in creation around them and the written Word of God.
Tragically, there are even times when believers rebel against God and His Word, ignore his statutes for them, and trust man’s wisdom over God’s.
Session Outline
++1.
Rebellion against God begins by ignoring His provision and promises (Num.
13:1-2,30-33).
++2.
Rebellion against God impacts others (Num.
14:1-4).
++3.
Rebellion against God has consequences (Num.
14:30-35).
Session in a Sentence
Rebellion against God is rooted in doubting God and always has consequences for both the one who rebels and for those around them.
God’s people rebelled against Him and refused to enter the land He had given them because they failed to trust His provision and promises.
Missional Application
Because we have experienced God’s forgiveness of our rebellion through Christ, we trust God as we obey His calling to share His kingdom with the nations.
Firefighters responded to the call of a building on fire.
Upon arrival, they noticed a girl on the tenth floor, but they could not reach her with their ladder truck because the street was too narrow.
So the firefighters set up a net for the girl to jump into.
They pleaded with her to jump into the net, doing their best to assure her that she would be safe.
But there was a problem: the girl was blind.
The girl could not see the net and could not bring herself to trust the pleas and assurances of the firefighters.
Then the girl’s father arrived on the scene, grabbed the bullhorn, and called out to his daughter for her to jump into the net.
The girl leapt from the window and landed safely.
Throughout the girl’s life, she had trusted the sound of her father’s voice to guide her where she could not see.
The girl heard her father’s voice and knew she could trust him because he had faithfully guided her so many times in the past.
Because of her trust in the faithfulness of her father, she walked away from the burning building unscathed.
1
(Adapted from Tony Evans’ Book of Illustrations, by Tony Evans (Chicago, IL: Moody, 2009) [eBook])
Interact: Ask group members the following question.
What is the difference between trusting someone you know and trusting someone you do not know?
(trusting someone you know is usually easier to do; you will likely trust someone you know over someone you don’t know; trust in someone you know is usually stronger)
· The Christian life is similar to the story of the blind girl: God has promised eternal life and all that pertains to life and godliness (2 Pet.
1:3), but for that promise to be made a reality in our lives, we have to trust Him for both salvation and everything we need for life and godliness in Him.
We have to take our Father at His word.
· But, The Christian life is unlike this story: Our trust in God is not a blind leap.
We can trust that God will be faithful to fulfill His promises to us because of who He is and His faithfulness throughout history (Heb.
11+12, cloud of witnesses).
We need to remember what God has done so that we can look ahead in full confidence to what He will do.
The Israelites’ failure to trust God and enter into the land He was giving them was not a small misstep but outright rebellion against Him.
Israel was not alone in their rebellion.
We too, at times, have rebelled against God.
God created us for His glory, but we all fall short of His glory.
The consequence of our sin is death for those who have not trusted Him as Savior and the product of death even though we are alive, for those who have trusted Him as Savior.
Point 1: Rebellion against God begins by ignoring His provision and promises (Num.
13:1-2,30-33).
After the Lord rescued His people from Egypt, He led them into the wilderness to Mount Sinai, where He gave them His law through Moses.
They spent about a year there, camped around the mountain.
Then the Lord, in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, guided them to the edge of the land He had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Read Numbers 13:1-2,30-33 (DDG p. 12).
1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel.
From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.”
.................................................
30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”
31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.”
32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height.
33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
DDG (p.
12)
God promised the Israelites the land of Canaan, and He also showed them, quite clearly, that He had the power to make good on that promise because He had made good on another promise—deliverance from Egypt.
But Israel’s ability to take residence in the promised land was contingent on their faithfulness to the God who had always been faithful to them.
· In Exodus 6:6-8, God promised the people of Israel that He would deliver them from the hand of Pharaoh and into the freedom of the promised land.
· In Exodus 7–14, God sent the ten plagues to break Pharaoh’s will, He parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could escape, and He caused the Red Sea to flow back together and crush the pursuing Egyptian army.
· In Exodus 15–17, God provided water for the Israelites to drink in the wilderness and bread and quail for the people to eat.
· In Exodus 17, the Lord gave the Israelites victory over the nation of Amalek, who came to fight them.
Interact: Ask group members the following question.
What are some moments of God’s faithfulness in your life that you can remember to help you remain faithful to God in the future?
(be prepared to give an answer of your own to jump-start the conversation)
DDG (p.
12).
Caleb and Joshua feared the LORD and were ready to go in and possess the land; the other 10 spies feared man and were ready to run from God’s promise.
I wonder how often we do the same thing.
The spies Moses sent saw that the land was flowing with milk and honey, confirming the truth of what God had said about the land, and they acknowledged this before the people (Num.
13:27).
But when they spoke about the cities and the people in the land, their report turned negative (vv. 28-29,31-33).
Ten of the spies saw their own weakness and stopped there, but Caleb and Joshua looked through their weakness and looked upon God.
The spies may have felt like grasshoppers compared to the people in the land, but the people of the land were not even ants compared to the God of Israel.
In fact, in comparison to the power of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, these nations were much less powerful.
All the Israelites had to do was trust in God’s power and faithfulness that he proved back in Egypt.
Sadly, they did not.
· It was true that the Israelites were not mighty (Deut.
7:7).
They were not trained warriors, they did not have superior weapons, and they were not a world power.
And it was also true that the people of the land were strong and that they lived in fortified cities.
But God had promised to hand the inhabitants of the land into the hands of His people.
· Sometimes God places opposition in our lives that we clearly can’t handle to teach us to lean on Him and not on ourselves.
In this, God is good and kind to allow us to face such opposition so we remember the truth that our salvation is from God.
(DO NOT USE) Commentary: “The reference to the descendants of Anak as Nephilim was designed to instill fear in the hearts of the Israelites.
The Nephilim, ‘fallen ones’ (‘giants’ in the LXX), are noted in Genesis 6:4 as the offspring of the ‘sons of God’ (‘angelic beings’ or ‘divine warriors’) and the ‘daughters of men.’
The Nephilim were of large stature, but they all would have been destroyed in Noah’s flood (Gen.
6:11), so it is best to conclude that the frightened spies gave an exaggerated report.” 2
Just as He had with the Israelites, God has shown us that we have every reason to trust and obey Him.
Yet in our foolishness, at times we have found it easier to trust in our sin instead of God because we can see it, we can feel it, and it gives us instant gratification.
So like the Israelites, we too have stared into the freedom and bounty of the promised land and foolishly longed for the captivity and despair of Egypt.
Point 2: Rebellion against God impacts others (Num.
14:1-4).
Read: Ask a volunteer to read Numbers 14:1-4 (DDG p. 13).
1 Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. 2 And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt!
Or would that we had died in this wilderness! 3 Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword?
Our wives and our little ones will become a prey.
Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4 And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
DDG (p.
13) , The Israelites failed to trust that God is faithful, which led to disobedience as they refused to enter the land He promised them.
The Israelites’ response was not a surprise to God.
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