WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 It's very, very good to be with you this morning. 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:09.000 If you'll permit me, I'd like to pray before I begin, so pray with me, please. 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:16.000 Our great God in heaven, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:19.000 we come to you before your word, 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:24.000 confessing that apart from Jesus Christ, we are nothing, 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:26.000 and we have nothing. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:32.000 We are so grateful to hold the word of God in our hands, 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:37.000 the living word of the living God, 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:41.000 and to read it and to hear it preached. 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:45.000 And we pray, Father, that you might grant your Holy Spirit to us, 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:50.000 that we might be able to receive the word, to lay it up in our hearts, 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:53.000 and to go forth practicing it in our lives, 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:56.000 and we ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake. 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:58.000 Amen. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:04.000 I trust that many of you have heard of the Dutch theologian Cornelius van Til. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:08.000 He was a seminary professor at Old Princeton, 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:11.000 until Old Princeton became exceeding the liberal, 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:18.000 and then he broke off with some men and went and taught at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:22.000 He taught seminary students there for over 40 years. 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:25.000 Van Til was known for many things, 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:32.000 not the least of which was his belief that there was no such thing as neutral ground 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:35.000 between believers and unbelievers. 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:41.000 Van Til said that all of humanity can be categorized in two groups. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:47.000 On the one hand, you have those who, by the grace of God, love God's truth, 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:49.000 and they submit to it. 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:54.000 And then you have the other group of humanity who suppress God's truth, 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:57.000 and they rebel against it. 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:00.000 And Van Til said, you can't be somewhere in between. 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:04.000 You're in one of those camps, but not in between. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:10.000 I mention that to you because this is a text about human rebellion. 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:16.000 And it was something that Van Til ironically saw illustrated in a very powerful way. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:20.000 You may have heard this story before, but he was traveling on a train, 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:25.000 and seated right across from him on the other side of the aisle was a father, 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:28.000 and he had his little girl in his lap. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:32.000 And they were talking quite nicely to one another. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:37.000 And then Van Til saw this little girl seemingly out of nowhere reach up 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:42.000 and just maliciously slap her daddy in the face. 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:50.000 And when Van Til saw that, he thought to himself, this is a perfect picture of human rebellion. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:54.000 That all of us, we are like that little girl. 00:02:54.000 --> 00:03:01.000 Seemingly every day of our lives, we reach up and we slap our heavenly father in the face, 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:05.000 not realizing that we owe our very existence to him, 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:09.000 and not realizing that the only reason we can reach up and slap him in the face 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:14.000 is because we're supported by his lap. 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:17.000 This is a text about human rebellion. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:20.000 And the first thing that I want you to see from the text this morning is that 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:25.000 human rebellion against God is a death deserving sin. 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:27.000 It's a death deserving sin. 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:29.000 We didn't have time to do it this morning, 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:36.000 but you almost would need to read Numbers 16 to make sense of Numbers 17. 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:44.000 If you may recall, Numbers 16 is about the rebellion of Korah and his rebellious relatives. 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:48.000 And they rebelled against Moses and Aaron. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:55.000 These two men that God had called and equipped and appointed as their leaders, 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.000 and they wanted nothing to do with these two men. 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:00.000 And they did some rather audacious things. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:04.000 The first thing that they did in Numbers 16 is they accused Moses and Aaron 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:08.000 of elevating themselves above the congregation. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:10.000 They said to Moses and Aaron, 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:13.000 you guys are special, but we're all special. 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:16.000 We should be like you. 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:22.000 Then they went so far as to accuse Moses and Aaron of negligent homicide. 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000 There wasn't even the Bible, I wouldn't believe it, 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.000 but the people rose up and said to Moses and Aaron, 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:32.000 you brought us into the wilderness in order to kill us. 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:34.000 And they accused them of lying. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:37.000 You said you would take us to a land of milk and honey, 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:44.000 but in fact you brought us out here so we can starve to death and not have water. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:47.000 These were the men that God had appointed. 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:55.000 And I take all of Numbers 16 as a subtle and timeless reminder 00:04:55.000 --> 00:05:01.000 that man does not like to be underneath the authority of God. 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:03.000 He does not like to be there. 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.000 Man wants to be in charge. 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:09.000 He wants to be his own governor, his own ruler. 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:12.000 And when God comes and says to do certain things, 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:16.000 or when he appoints men as leaders over us, we rebel against it. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:18.000 And we see little clues of it in everyday life. 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:22.000 You see it in your children when they don't obey you. 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:25.000 Parents, you are God's vice regents in your home. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:27.000 He's given you as authority figures. 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:30.000 When they rebel against you, they're rebellion against God. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:35.000 We see it in churches when people refuse to submit to the authority 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:38.000 of God appointed leaders and so on and so forth. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.000 It's just a vicious cycle. 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000 Man does not like to be ruled by God. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:49.000 Now, in response to the rebellious attitudes of the people, 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:53.000 you may recall what God told Moses and Aaron to do. 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:57.000 He told them, separate yourselves from the people because I'm going to destroy them. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:03.000 And that's when Moses and Aaron fell on their faces and they pleaded with God. 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:07.000 They begged him not to destroy his covenant children. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:12.000 And God listened to the prayers of those two men, his servants. 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:16.000 And he told the people, okay, you have an opportunity to separate yourself. 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:21.000 Separate yourself from Korah and his sons, and if you do, I will spare you. 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:23.000 And after they were given an opportunity to do that, 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:30.000 those that refused to submit, God began to meet out his punishment. 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:36.000 It's one of the most horrific incidences, I think, in the Old Testament of God judging sinners. 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:45.000 He opened up the earth and people fell into it, and then he closed the ground over it. 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:52.000 Can you think of a more horrifying way to die than to be buried alive? 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:59.000 For 250 other men, God sent down fire from heaven and he incinerated them. 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:05.000 And then the next day, the people of Israel rose up again, still hardened in their unbelief, 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:11.000 and they accused Moses and Aaron of having all the blood of all those men on their hands. 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:15.000 And it was almost as if that was the last straw for God. 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:23.000 And he unleashed a plague and it killed 14,700 Israelites. 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:29.000 And that brings us to number 17, because the instructions here in number 17 were 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:34.000 a direct result of the people's sin. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:39.000 Most notably of which, and you'll see the word occur over and over in the text, 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:42.000 was the sin of grumbling. 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:46.000 Some of your Bibles may translate it as murmuring or complaining. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:54.000 This idea of a complainatory spirit in the heart of man that very often manifests itself 00:07:54.000 --> 00:08:01.000 in sins of speech against God and against God's people. 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:06.000 I was a pilot for most of my life in the Marine Corps. 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:10.000 Went through Navy flight training and I had a friend who in the midst of flight training 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:14.000 had to leave training because he was diagnosed with a heart murmur. 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:20.000 I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but heart murmur happens when you have turbulent blood flow in your heart. 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:25.000 The ironic thing is he lived his whole life, totally oblivious to the fact that he had a heart murmur. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:30.000 But when you go to the U.S. Navy medical facility, they put you under these diagnostic machines 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:37.000 and those machines recognized it right away and he was not able to fly anymore. 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:47.000 The sad reality for us is that we don't need a diagnostic machine to expose our murmuring and our grumbling. 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:51.000 It's apparent all the time. 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:58.000 It dominates our homes as we grumble against our spouses and against our children and our finances 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:06.000 and just it wells up in us all the time. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:17.000 The text tells us that the chief reason behind God's frustration with Israel was this grumbling. 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:20.000 Look at verse 5. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:22.000 He says, 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:27.000 And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout. 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:29.000 And then there's a purpose clause. 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:38.000 Thus, or for this reason, I will make to cease from me the grumblings of the people of Israel which they grumble against you. 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:46.000 So the whole reason God is going to do this supernatural miracle is so that the grumbling will stop. 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:56.000 But I wonder if you noticed inadvertently that the correlation that the text makes between grumbling against the leaders of God 00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:01.000 and the fact that God says that's the same thing as grumbling against me. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:07.000 Now I'm not your pastor and so it's very easy for me to say this to you because I will probably never see you again. 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000 But this is harder to say to your own congregation. 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:21.000 But may I exhort you as God's people to be very careful about rebelling against the men that God has appointed over you. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:32.000 I admonish you by the Holy Spirit to be careful about murmuring against them and grumbling against their fallen men. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:34.000 They will make mistakes. 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:41.000 But I think it's incumbent upon us as we read this text and we see the correlation that God himself makes, 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:51.000 that we be sober-minded and careful about how we treat the leaders that God has given to you in His grace and His mercy. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:59.000 Be mindful that they have a grave responsibility to shepherd the flock of God. 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:01.000 It is not easy work. 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:04.000 And more than that, the Scripture is very clear. 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:14.000 All the men that serve you in positions of authority, they will incur a stricter judgment on the last day because they're leaders. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:19.000 They need your sympathy and your support, not your murmuring and your grumbling. 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:23.000 Now that does not mean for a moment that they're beyond justified criticism. 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:29.000 But just be careful. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:33.000 According to God, this is my reading of the text as I understand it. 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:40.000 It seems to me that grumbling and complaining, use those two words interchangeably, 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:45.000 this was not just a sin among God's people, at least in this context. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:47.000 This was the sin. 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:50.000 This was the main problem. 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:53.000 And what I found perplexing in the text is this. 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:57.000 Of all the sins that the people of Israel committed, and there were many of them, 00:11:57.000 --> 00:12:06.000 why is it that God was so particularly disturbed by grumbling? 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:17.000 He even says here in the text in verse 10 that their grumbling needs to cease lest they die. 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:26.000 What is it that makes grumbling and complaining and murmuring a capital crime? 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:28.000 Why is it so heinous? 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:34.000 The Westminster Confession talks about certain sins being more grievous than others. 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:40.000 And this seems to be one of those sins that in the sight of God is especially grievous. 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:46.000 I give you three reasons why grumbling is such a terrible sin among God's people. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:48.000 The first is this. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:52.000 Grumbling spurns God's authority. 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:56.000 It spurns, it rejects God's authority. 00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:03.000 When you grumble and you complain, what you're essentially saying to God is that you want to be in charge, 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:06.000 and that if you were in charge, things would be much better off. 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:12.000 If you controlled providence, then the thing that makes you grumble wouldn't be happening. 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:16.000 It's a very prideful behavior to grumble against God. 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:20.000 I love the way that Paul Tripp defines this. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:26.000 He says, when you grumble, you don't want God's way. 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:30.000 You want what you want. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:33.000 When you grumble, you don't want God's way or God's will. 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:39.000 You want what you want in that very moment. 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:44.000 And we know from Scripture that this grumbling spirit, it flows out of our hearts. 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:50.000 Jesus said in Luke 6.45, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:55.000 Grumbling doesn't start with your mouth, it starts down in your heart. 00:13:55.000 --> 00:14:01.000 And that's hard to hear because if you're like me, you want to believe that it's your spouse that makes you grumble, 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:05.000 or it's your children that make you grumble, or it's your job that makes you grumble, 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:11.000 or it's your finances that make you grumble, when in fact it's your heart that makes you grumble. 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:17.000 It's your heart that is unsettled with God's providence. 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:26.000 The second reason why grumbling is so serious is because grumbling spurns God's goodness and His glory. 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:29.000 One commentator explains it this way. 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:33.000 When God's people grumble, they miss out on their chief end in life. 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:39.000 As long as they are grumbling, they are neither glorifying God nor enjoying Him. 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:44.000 When we grumble against the order that God has set in place for our lives, 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:49.000 we are robbing God of the praise and glory that is due unto Him. 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:57.000 Every time you grumble, friends, there's a sense in which you rob God of His goodness. 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:03.000 I met a pastor a couple of years ago who told me a story about his son. 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:10.000 His son I think was in his early 30s, but he had a severe profound case of autism. 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:16.000 Even though the young man was in his early 30s, he basically had the mind of a seven-year-old. 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:18.000 He acted like a seven-year-old. 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:22.000 The father is a pastor, spends a lot of time away from his family, 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:25.000 but he came to this son one summer and he said, 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:27.000 I want to do something special with you. 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:29.000 It's going to be just the two of us. 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:33.000 You tell me where you want to go and I'm going to stop all working and we're going to go 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:35.000 and we're just going to enjoy each other. 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:38.000 And his son said he wanted to go on a cruise. 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:41.000 So they booked tickets to go on this cruise. 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:46.000 And the whole trip was about bringing joy to the son. 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:49.000 Now remember, he's 30 years old, but he's got the mind of a seven-year-old. 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:53.000 So he wanted to see all the silly characters and the shows, 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:58.000 and he wanted to swim in the pools, and he had an obsession with the color orange. 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:01.000 So every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, 00:16:01.000 --> 00:16:04.000 they ordered everything that was orange on the menu, 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:10.000 not because the father likes orange food, but because the son likes orange food. 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:14.000 And then he said that on the last day of the cruise, 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:20.000 this son of his accidentally locked himself in the bathroom. 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:23.000 I think you would say the toilet room. 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:27.000 If you've ever been on a cruise ship, you know that those toilet rooms 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.000 are really small. 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:34.000 And he got in there and locked the door, and he couldn't get out. 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:36.000 And he started trying to fiddle with the lock, 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.000 and his dad was on the other side of the door saying, 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:40.000 son, calm down, just listen to me. 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.000 You've got to turn the lock this way, you've got to do this. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:45.000 Well, the son suffers from claustrophobia a little bit, 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:47.000 and he began to panic. 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:50.000 He began to scream and cry. 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:55.000 He pounded on the door so hard that security had to come to the room. 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:57.000 This lasted for 15 minutes. 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:02.000 And then finally, the boy accidentally turned the lock the right way, 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:09.000 and the door opened up, and his son came out just livid, angry. 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:14.000 He pointed his fist right in his dad's face and said, 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:19.000 you never do anything for me. 00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:24.000 And his father realized, that's exactly how we treat God. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:30.000 We so easily forget all the goodness that he's bestowed on us. 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:33.000 And the minute something doesn't go the way that we want it to, 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:36.000 we lash out at him. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:46.000 The reality is that as Christians, every single one of us is mentally handicapped. 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:58.000 When you complain and you grumble, you vandalize God's goodness. 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:04.000 The third reason why grumbling is so grievous is that it spurns God's plan. 00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:09.000 I preached through the book of Exodus in my first two years at my home church, 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:12.000 and one of the things that amazed me about the book of Exodus is this. 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:17.000 It was not by accident that Israel was trapped between the Red Sea and the Egyptians. 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:19.000 God put them there. 00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:22.000 They were headed for the wilderness, and God stopped Moses, 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:28.000 and he intentionally rerouted them and put them in a place where they could not escape. 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:32.000 It was not by accident that they were thirsty and hungry in the wilderness. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:39.000 God did all of that for the very purpose of manifesting his power in the midst of them. 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:44.000 He did those things to produce faith and dependence, 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:49.000 and when you grumble at the circumstances of life, you lose sight of that. 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:58.000 You forget that the things that make you prone to grumble are most likely the very things that God has brought into your life 00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:04.000 to make Jesus Christ more precious and more valuable to you. 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:09.000 When I was a young man, one of the first lines of poetry that I ever memorized, 00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:13.000 and I still carry it with me to this day, was by a poet named Francis Willett, 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:19.000 and he writes, God, I thank you for the bitter things. 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:22.000 They've been a friend to grace. 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:29.000 They have driven me from the paths of ease to storm the secret place. 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:32.000 And I wonder if you've learned that. 00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:42.000 Have you learned that in the midst of your suffering that God uses it to drive you to a place where you experience intimacy and relationship with him, 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:45.000 you would never, ever experience otherwise. 00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.000 But when you grumble, you lose sight of all of that. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:53.000 You're blind to it. 00:19:53.000 --> 00:20:01.000 I think it may be helpful at this point to make a distinction between sinful grumbling and suffering-induced groaning. 00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:04.000 Some of you may be in a very dark place in life. 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:07.000 You may feel like Christian in the pilgrim's progress, 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:14.000 where you're down in the dungeon of doubting castle under the screw of giant despair. 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:18.000 God brings hard days in the lives of his people, 00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:23.000 and that produces honest expressions of sorrow and grief and agony, 00:20:23.000 --> 00:20:29.000 but that is not to be confused with sinful grumbling. 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:35.000 We're designed as fallen creatures to groan when life hurts. 00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.000 Paul says to the church in Corinth, 1 Corinthians 10, 00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:41.000 speaking about what happened to Israel and the wilderness, 00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:46.000 we must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:51.000 nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:55.000 And then Paul says, these things happen to them as an example, 00:20:55.000 --> 00:21:01.000 but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. 00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:13.000 When Paul exhorts the church in Corinth not to grumble, he is not forbidding them from groaning over hard life. 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:18.000 We live in a fallen world where broken people, it hurts. 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:22.000 I would even look to the example of our Lord Jesus Christ himself, 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:25.000 who groaned with agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, 00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:28.000 who groaned over the unbelief of Jerusalem, 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:31.000 who groaned and wept over the death of his beloved friend Lazarus, 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:34.000 and he did all of that sinlessly. 00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:43.000 So there has to be a distinction between groaning and grumbling. 00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:46.000 Hold that distinction in your minds. 00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:50.000 Despite the immense gravity of the sin of grumbling, 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:55.000 did you see the merciful nature of God in number 17? 00:21:55.000 --> 00:22:01.000 I think God at this point would have been fully justified in just destroying all of Israel. 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:02.000 Instead, what does he do? 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:06.000 He comes not in the form of a final judgment in number 17, 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:10.000 but he comes with a form of instruction. 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:15.000 He behaves like a father who gets down and takes a knee and looks his children in the face 00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:20.000 and teaches them what to believe and how to behave. 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:27.000 And most notably what God does here in number 17 is he teaches his people about their need for a mediator. 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:34.000 They're going to need someone who will stand between a holy God and a sinful people, 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:39.000 and they've got to learn the necessity of that truth. 00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:44.000 So in the first place this morning we saw that grumbling is a death-deserving sin, 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:51.000 but secondly we see that grumbling or rebellion demands a mediator. 00:22:51.000 --> 00:22:54.000 Moses, or rather Aaron, was a mediator. 00:22:54.000 --> 00:23:04.000 An mediator is someone who settles differences between conflicting parties. 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:14.000 It was Aaron's God-appointed duty to come in between Israel and God and mediate that relationship. 00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:17.000 It was powerfully demonstrated back in chapter 16. 00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:24.000 If you'll look in your Bibles on number 16, verses 46 through 48. 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:27.000 Listen to Aaron's task here. 00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:34.000 Moses said to Aaron, take your censer and put fire on it from off the altar and lay incense on it 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:38.000 and carry it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them. 00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:42.000 For wrath has gone out from the Lord, the plague has begun. 00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:48.000 So Aaron took it, as Moses said, and he ran into the midst of the assembly. 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:52.000 And behold, the plague had already begun among the people, 00:23:52.000 --> 00:24:01.000 and he put on the incense and made atonement for the people, and he stood between the dead and the living. 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:04.000 And the plague was stopped. 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:07.000 The point that God is making there is very simple. 00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:13.000 Without a mediator we have no chance of survival before a holy God. 00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:21.000 And that's why God went through such great lengths here in number 17 to validate the ministry and the mediation of Aaron. 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:26.000 And he did it by working a miracle in verse 8 of chapter 17. 00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:33.000 Aaron's rod sprouted and it put forth buds and produced blossoms and it bore ripe almonds. 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:40.000 God needed for Aaron's ministry to be validated and vindicated in the presence of the people. 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.000 And did you notice how they responded? 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:47.000 They were absolutely silent. 00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:50.000 They couldn't argue with it. 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:53.000 God had said, listen, I'll show you who your leader is. 00:24:53.000 --> 00:25:01.000 Let's do this thing where we put the stabs in the arc and then I will cause a miracle to be produced on one of them. 00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:04.000 And you will know for sure who is my appointed man. 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:09.000 And God did that. He had spoken and they were completely silent. 00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:13.000 It reminded me of what Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones used to say. 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:16.000 He used to describe Christians in this way. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:23.000 A Christian is one whose mouth has been shut. 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:27.000 All the arguing with God stops. 00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:31.000 You hear his word by the grace of God. You submit to it. 00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:34.000 You stop making a defense of yourself. 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:40.000 A Christian is one whose mouth has been shut. 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:43.000 God vindicated Aaron. 00:25:43.000 --> 00:25:52.000 And yet as you read the rest of your Bibles, you know that Aaron's ministry, even though it was validated by God, it was tragically inadequate. 00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:58.000 Aaron couldn't stop the people from grumbling because he couldn't stop their sin problem. 00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:09.000 Aaron applied his trade in the law of God and the law of God can show you that grumbling is a sin, but it can't stop you from grumbling. 00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:18.000 And I have living proof of that in my household because my wife is here today and she has a problem with this by the way. 00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:26.000 But in our home, in virtually every room of our house, we have Scripture on our walls, the law of God. 00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:32.000 We have Scripture verses in our dining room and in our kitchen and in our children's room. 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:41.000 And they're plastered on the walls in our living room and yet the spirit of rebellion lives on in our house every day. 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:44.000 We can't stop it. 00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:55.000 We grumble and we complain and we murmur against each other and against God. 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:06.000 We don't need someone or something to manage our grumbling. What we need is someone to pay for it, to bear its penalty. 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:15.000 And I'm guessing in a congregation of this size, there are any number of you you intensely struggle with a complainatory spirit. 00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:18.000 It's a grave sin. 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:31.000 You spurn God's authority. You rob him of his goodness and his glory. You spurn his plans that he's designed for you. 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:41.000 But my privilege as a minister of the gospel this morning is to remind you that the reason why forgiveness is available to you is because you had a high priest 00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:50.000 or you have a high priest who had a perfectly sinless mouth and a pure heart. 00:27:50.000 --> 00:28:01.000 If any man on the face of the earth ever had a justified reason to grumble and to complain, it was our Lord Jesus. 00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:16.000 He was falsely accused. He was publicly shamed. He was sentenced to death for crimes he did not commit by men that he himself had created and had given the right to breathe. 00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:24.000 And yet the prophet Isaiah says that he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:31.000 Like a lamb led to the slaughter, like a sheep that is silent before its shears. He opened not his mouth. 00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:38.000 And you understand that if he had, all would have been lost. 00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:51.000 If he had spurned the authority of the Father, if he had questioned the goodness of God, if he had despised the plan of God for his life, 00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:59.000 you would still be in your sin. And so would I. 00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:10.000 We have a great high priest who is holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens. 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:20.000 And that is exactly what we need because we are like that little girl on her father's lap every day reaching up, slapping him right in the face. 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:33.000 And the good news of the gospel this morning, friends, is God has provided you a mediator, a perfect man to stand between a holy God and a sinful people. 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:47.000 And not just to stand between the living and the dead like Aaron did, but to enter into death and to bear all your penalty in his own body on the tree. 00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:52.000 And all God's people said, Amen.