4.3.16 Youth Sermon

Wander with the King

Numbers 14:30-34, "Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. As for your children that you said would be taken as plunder, I will bring them in to enjoy the land you have rejected. But you — your bodies will fall in this desert. Your children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the desert. For forty years — one year for each of the forty days you explored the land — you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.'"

Through Israel's wandering in the wilderness due to their lack of trust in God, we can see that there are indeed consequences to disobedience, and that the defining characteristic of those who entered the Promised Land were those who had faith in God.

However, we cannot say that the 1st generation was entirely cursed. Moses, who himself was unable to enter the Promised Land, said to his people: 2 And you shall remember the whole way that them Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word[a] that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.

The 1st generation was being humbled, learning that it is God and nothing else that sustains them. They were learning grace; in fact, God was disciplining the Israelites as His sons! What a blessing it is to be (even in the wilderness) with the Father, the King of the Universe. Its okay to wander in confusion, suffering, and pain, if I'm wandering with God as my father.