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It has been nothing but a pleasure to be with you here on these occasions, and a delight to see the willingness with which you have worked with me in the study of God's Holy Word. Next week, God willing, I hope to be with the missionaries in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, where God has been working remarkably in this last fifteen years, and they have seen some twenty to twenty two or three assemblies planted in that part of Belgium in those years. I shall be with them for a week of very intensive Bible study with the workers, those that can speak English, to try and, uh, replenish perhaps some of the enormous energies and studies that they themselves have given in these many years.
After that, God willing, I shall be in Spain, the northwest part of Spain, for a month. There too, one's duties will be quite heavy. If on the odd occasion, amongst all the other multitudinous things for which you pray, you could remember just for half a second now and again to include me in your prayers. I should myself be exceedingly grateful. Now let's begin to read tonight in our book of Numbers, beginning in chapter one and verse one. And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Take you the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers' houses, according to the number of the names, every male by their polls, for twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel.
Thou and Aaron shall number them by their hosts. Verse forty four: These are they that were numbered, which Moses and Aaron numbered, and the princes of Israel being twelve men. They were each one for his father's house. So all they that were numbered were hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty.
And then let's pass on to read from chapter thirty two. Chapter thirty two, beginning in verse one. Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of cattle. And when they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, that behold, the place was a place for cattle, the children of Gad and the children of Reuben came and spake unto Moses and to Eleazar the priest, and unto the princes of the congregation, saying, Ataroth and Debon and Jazer and Nimrar and Heshbon and Eliale and Sebam and Nebo and Beon, the land which the Lord smote before the congregation of Israel is a land for cattle, and thy servants have cattle.
And they said, if we have found grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession. Bring us not over Jordan. And Moses said unto the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben, Shall your brethren go to the war, and you sit here? Wherefore discourage you, the heart of the children of Israel, from going over into the land which the Lord hath given them. As did your fathers, when I sent them from Kadesh Barnea to see the land.
For when they went up unto the valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, that they should not go into the land which the Lord had given them. The Lord's anger was kindled in that day, and he sware, saying, Surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt from twenty years old and upward shall see the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, because they have not fully followed me, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun, because they have wholly followed the Lord.
And the Lord's anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander to and fro in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was consumed. And behold, you are risen up in your father's stead, an increase of sinful men to augment yet the fierce anger of the Lord toward Israel. For if you turn away from after him, he will yet again leave them in the wilderness, and you shall destroy all this people. And they, that is the people of Reuben and Gad, and they came near unto him, that is Moses, and said, But we will build sheepfolds here for our cattle and cities for our little ones, but we ourselves will be ready to go before the children of Israel until we have brought them unto their place.
And our little ones shall dwell in the fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not return unto our houses until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance, or we will not inherit with them on the other side of Jordan and forward, because our inheritance is fallen to us on this side Jordan eastward. And Moses said unto them, If you will do this thing, if you will arm yourselves to go before the Lord to the war, and every armed man of you will pass over Jordan before the Lord until he hath driven out his enemies from before him, and the land be subdued before the Lord, then afterward you shall return and be guiltless towards the Lord and towards Israel.
And this land shall be unto you for a possession before the Lord. But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out. And to those passages, let's add just a few verses from the New Testament, from Philippians and chapter three. Philippians chapter three and verse ten: That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death, if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained or am already made perfect, but I press on, if so be that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal, until the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded. And if in anything you are otherwise minded, even this shall God reveal unto you. Only whereunto we have already attained, by that same rule, let us walk. God give us hearts to hear his exhortations from his word this evening. Now, in these past studies, you may have noticed that we have been following throughout the same plan.
We have begun each evening by taking a part of the instructions for the preparations of Israel. Preparations that were made for them by God to prepare them for crossing the wilderness, to come at last to their great inheritance. And each night we have studied one of the provisions or two and sought to understand why God held Israel up until they should have made that particular provision and preparation. And then when we have thought that we have understood some at least of what lay behind the preparation, we have turned to a part of the history that follows, the record of the journey, and there, sure enough, we have come across situations that throw a flood of light on the question, why did God make them take the trouble to do that particular preparation?
Time and again, we have discovered, of course, that God, who foresaw the need of his people in the wilderness, had asked them to make that particular preparation because he knew at some miles, some years out across the wilderness, they would come into circumstances where that particular preparation would prove a godsend and a lifesaver for his people. Last week, then, following our plan, we began by looking in chapter five to the preparations that there God made for his people. And we found that they were concerned with very practical and somewhat serious matters.
The need to keep the camp of Israel free from defilement. The need to insist amongst the people of God as they journeyed on faithfulness and loyalty to God and to one another in their day-to-day living and in their business arrangements. And then we saw how God concentrated at great length on the provision so that husbands and wives should be able to have complete confidence one in another. So that if, for instance, a man grew jealous of his wife and suspicious whether she had in fact been loyal to him, then God made provision that would settle that man's doubts.
So that he might go on happily, eh, with his wife as they journeyed through the difficult circumstances of the wilderness, heart to heart and shoulder to shoulder, in unquestioned trust, each of the other's fidelity and loyalty. And as we thought about those things, we thought about ourselves, not just about husbands and wives or businessmen, but we thought about ourselves in general as members of the people of God, reminding ourselves that it is not merely a question of getting to heaven by our individual selves, but that we march in company with the people of God as a whole and must do nothing that would disturb the health of the people of God, nothing that would disrupt the confidence of the people of God.
And we spoke to ourselves lessons on how to maintain that sense of confidence, the one and the other, by each one being willing to be one hundred percent honest with God, judging ourselves in the light of God, and prepared if need be, to submit to the discipline of God in our daily lives. Having learned our lessons there as best we could, at the end of an unpardonably long session last week, we turned to the history.
And it dawned on us why God had spent so much time over that particular provision for the loyalty of his people. Because, lo and behold, we read of an occasion when, as Israel were going through the wilderness, they not only fell into disloyalty the one to the other, they fell into the most shocking and outrageous disloyalty towards God himself. They went and followed other gods, and Israel was joined to Baal Peor, Baal of Peor. We are told that when that happened, God was jealous, like a husband might be jealous over his wife, who had broken faith with him.
Indeed, now we, we began to see that that sacred institution of marriage and husband and wife and wife and husband, loyal the one to another, is God's own invention at our lowly level, a model of higher things, of the relationship that God seeks with his people. Time and time again in Old Testament we read of God as husband and Israel as his wife. We read how God went a courting. Some of you youngsters didn't know he did it. Well, he did. God himself went a courting. He wooed Israel in the wilderness to win her love and win her affection and win her faithfulness to himself.
And of course, when we Christians come to the New Testament, we find the same image used. And now it is a question of Christ the bridegroom and the church the bride, and the lovely story of how Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. And because of those grand and glorious and eternal realities, God devised the human institution of love between man and woman and marriage. That at that level we might have an object lesson constantly before our eyes to remind us of the great permanent and eternal thing. What a sacred thing daily life is, isn't it?
An ordinary human life, where the relation of child to father can remind us of that eternal relationship that God seeks. He is the father from whom every family on earth is named. Where the relationship in daily work of servant and master can remind us of that permanent and eternal relationship between us and the Lord, he the master and we his glad servants. Where the rough and tumble of life in the family between brother and sister and sister and sister and brother and brother is given us that we might learn the greater relationship that shall exist eternally of brothers and sisters in the Lord.
That is why for the Christian in these matters, loyalty takes on a profounder significance than even for men and women of the world. A human marriage meant to reflect in this sorry world that lovely, lovely thing that is the love of Christ for his church. It was a sad day, therefore, when out in the wilderness, Israel compromised her loyalty to God, her husband, and was joined to another husband, a false god. Ba'al pa'o.
To be faithful to the proportion of scripture, we ought therefore, serious and solemn though it is, to spend just a little more time this evening at the beginning of our study on these things and think together of how and in what practical sense it could happen to us who love the Lord, in the course of our wilderness journey, to get tripped up by one thing and another, and become temporarily unfaithful to the Lord. It is, of course, a very real possibility. You will remember that the risen Lord himself, in dictating the seven letters to his seven churches, saw fit to mention to one of them that they were to take great care because there were some people in their church like Balaam.
And our Lord referred precisely to this historical incident. There were people in your church, he says, there are people in your church like Balaam who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the people of Israel, and to do two things: to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed to idols. For us, I suspect, as Christians, when we read of such unfaithfulness as fornication, our minds might first of all go to what the Bible calls spiritual adultery. James, for instance, says, oh, you adulteresses, do you not know that friendship of the world is enmity with God?
Therefore, he who deliberately determines to be a friend of the world is thereby constituted an enemy of God. James is not, of course, telling us to live as hermits. James is not telling us we must shut ourselves away from the world. We have a bounden duty to mix with men and women, to love them for Christ's sake, and to bring the gospel to them, and to help them and to bless them wherever we can. James is not thinking of the men and women of the world just as individuals. He is thinking of society as a godless institution, reigned over by Satan himself, whose heart is away from God, whose values are not based on God, whose ambitions are idolatrous, and they forget.
And for a believer to get caught up in that maelstrom and adopt the same standards, just the same ambitions, just the same goals that the world seeks. So to forget God is of course, of course, an example of infidelity that deserves to be equated with the unfaithfulness of a husband to his wife, or a wife to her husband. We are called upon to beware, therefore, of spiritual adultery.
But I know not whether in this modern age we ought not just for a moment to think of the other literal sin of fornication. What a different world it is for our young folks now than what it was in my youth all those centuries ago. Where if you are not prepared to engage in premarital unchastity, you're thought to be psychologically odd. Where the whole gamut of entertainment and a great deal of literature is geared to approve of all kinds of deviant sexual behavior.
Of course, it means that we live in an age that gets increasingly day by day, to resemble more than ever it did the ancient Greek and Roman world in which the gospel first appeared. In a sense, there's nothing unusual about it, therefore. And the question arises, how did the apostles train those young converts from Corinth and elsewhere into living in a wholesome, holy fashion, such as would be pleasing to the Lord. Just you imagine some visiting preacher writing to you after he'd gone away to express his thanks for hospitality and adding a PS, now remember, won't you, in Cockfern, that you're not supposed to commit fornication.
You'd say, you just think we are? We don't have to be told that. But the Greeks in Corinth did. I repeat, they had to be told it was wrong. Nowadays, some worldly folks of... in our society might need to be told it's wrong, mightn't they? Point is, how did they tell them? Look, says Paul, with tremendous tenderness, writing to his fellow believers in Corinth. That body of yours, you know, is not your own.
You were bought with a price. Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats. But ultimately, the body is for the Lord. He that is joined to a harlot becomes one flesh. He that is joined to the Lord, do you notice the verb? Joined to the Lord. Is one spirit. Shall I take therefore the members of Christ? You say, how did I become a member of Christ? My dear brother, my sister, this is the, the superb wonder and mystery of salvation.
You've been joined to the Lord. You've become one in spirit. This is no empty daydream or pipe dream. It is a profound spiritual reality that when you first trusted Christ and you said your I will to Christ. It's in spirit you joined to the Lord. Shall I take the members of Christ and make them a member of a harlot? What kind of disloyalty to Christ would that be?
And it is possible, isn't it? Not that people set out to be evil, but we have a relentless foe. And just like old Balaam, who knew far better, but Balaam, up to his tricks as usual, taught Barak to cast a stumbling block. So still we have religious leaders who say that, uh, well, you know, so long as it's a loving relationship, we don't see there's anything wrong in fornication. Ah, but it isn't just that particular sin that's involved in this kind of disloyalty to the Lord Jesus.
Let's turn now to think of our businessmen. And of course, it doesn't apply, does it, anywhere to any one of you sitting here, but just for the sake of completion in preaching all the scripture. Our Lord Jesus said to the church at Thyatira, you have a woman there called Jezebel, and she likewise teaches my servants to commit fornication and to eat things offered to idols. A little thought will tell us perhaps what our, our Lord was referring to. Anybody, of course, if they wanted to in a Greek city, could go and buy meat from the temple authorities, meat that had been sacrificed to idols.
If you wanted to put on a super duper dinner party, you could hire a room in the temple precincts, and the meat was already laid on. What ho, it might cost you a penny, but still, ah, you know how you, you flash out now and again. It wasn't merely that. It was, for instance, if you were a goldsmith, then to get going in business, you had to belong to the guild of the goldsmiths. And the guild, of course, would have its dinner parties. And at the dinner party, there would be a statue of the patron god or goddess, patron god of the goldsmith.
And before the assembled businessmen ate their food, the food would be offered to the patron god or goddess. What should a Christian do? You say, but wait a minute, I mean, there's cash involved here. You see, I can't afford to be out with the goldsmiths, goodness me, my, it's LSD, you know. I, I need that contact, you see. Orders, my good man. It could cost me a lot. I could be boycotted if I didn't go to those parties. I see. So what then? There was a someone addressed under the sobriquet of Jezebel in that church who was apparently saying it was okay for Christian businessmen to engage in such a setting.
As I say, I have no need to talk these things to you, perhaps. I'm in the happy position of having a bank manager who is a believer. He once told me, now in his younger days, the principles of his bank brought pressure to bear upon him to become a Freemason. Said, there you see, if you're not a member of the Freemasons, you lose us business. He said to me, what should I have done? He said, I, you know, I, I, I, I, I couldn't do it, for the Lord's sake, I couldn't do it. And in the end, he didn't. I'm pleased to say, in God's goodness, he became a manager after that. What a pressure to be under.
I have known commercial travelers who are believers in the same position. Their principals say, but look here, you see you're not getting the orders now. If you were a member of that particular society of Freemasons, you would get us very more orders from the shops when you go around. Look, you must become a member. Yet, of course, it is common knowledge, and every schoolboy knows it. That particular organization is as idolatrous as Jezebel and Ahaz, Ahab knew how to be, and about double as bad. Reverencing the same old gods and goddesses of the ancient Middle East.
What a pity. I was talking to the same aforesaid manager the other day, and I raised the topic deliberately. Oh yes, he said, but there are many Christian businessmen around this city in that organization. My brethren, how real is heaven? We're journeying to heaven, are we not? And the issue at stake is loyalty, undivided loyalty to our blessed Lord.
To compromise with idolatry in that fashion is to provoke him to jealousy. Oh, I wouldn't do it if I were you, says Paul, talking to the Corinthians. I wouldn't do it, gentlemen, I wouldn't do it if I were you. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? You mean, are we stronger than he? When a human husband is jealous over his wife, who knows what he'll do? And if we provoke the Lord to jealousy, simply because he loves us, not out of spite, he will go to the most extreme measures to bring us back.
In what other spheres would this lesson be applicable? Let me turn and talk once more to my younger brethren and sisters. In second Corinthians chapter eleven, uh Paul's talking to the Corinthians says, now look, he says, I have espoused you as a chaste virgin to Christ, and I'm jealous over you with a godly jealousy. Lest that old serpent, the devil, the deceiver, should corrupt your thoughts, for thus it should be, your thoughts, from the simplicity that is towards Christ, the simplicity and the purity that is towards Christ.
Now that word simplicity in modern English means something quite different from what it here means in scripture. In the English of our authorized version, simplicity has its ancient meaning of something that is one fold instead of, say, twofold. The other word for twofoldness in English is duplicity. What Paul is thinking about, therefore, eh, we can illustrate to ourselves by this very situation he mentions. I've espoused you as a chaste virgin to Christ, engaged, not yet married.
And I'm afraid, he says, that Satan will get at your, now notice this time, it's your thought life, your intellectual life. And what he'll try to do is to get at your onefold, your utter, undeviating, intellectual loyalty to the Lord Jesus. You say, what ho is, I don't know, is Satan interested in my studies? He is indeed. Is he interested in my thoughts? Oh, supremely so. Satan isn't always to be found in Soho.
He prowls around a good many universities that I know of, and there he gets far more victims. You see, at heart is not simply bodily indiscretions. At the heart of things is our loyalty to the Lord Jesus. That's what he's after. You'll say, ooh, I can't, I don't know much about these things. You'll have to help me. But you know, I kind of gathered after many years that when a young lady, before a young lady is engaged, as we have it, she's free to keep an open mind, isn't she?
Of course she is. Shall it be Tom? Well, there's a lot to be said for Tom, you know, hair curls beautifully. Yeah, but he hasn't got such a flashy car as Bill has, and he's got a better car, do you see? Hmm. Yes, but uh, uh, do you see Robert, he's a beautiful personality. Now, which shall it be? And some days she thinks Robert, and some days she thinks Tom, and some days she thinks nobody at all, and so forth and so on, you know. Why not keep an open mind on such things? You almost could say as long as you can. Ha. Let her once become engaged. That's the end of keeping an open mind, isn't it?
To have given her word. Now to consider other possibilities is not being very clever and very scientific, it's being disloyal. And there are uglier words to describe it. And I've espoused you to the blessed Lord Jesus. Oh, my dear young friends. He wants your intellectual loyalty. And in that sense, to keep an open mind.
He's not clever. You mustn't imagine that I am arguing for intellectual obscurantism. Not telling you that you shouldn't, uh, go for advanced study because it might upset your faith. Well, of course not. We are to love the Lord with all our mind. But watch what Satan did with Eve. God has said, of all the trees you may eat, but you mustn't eat of this particular tree, for in the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die. And along came his satanic majesty.
Eve, he said, my dear, you can't eat of any of these trees around here at all. Oh, that's not right, she said. No, no, no, no, we can eat any of them except this one here. Mm, yes, he said, I thought so. Yes. Typically God, of course, you know, he could make you a lot happier. He loves to keep things from you, you see. Actually, Eve, he says a very nice tree if you look at it. Look, look, you know, isn't it a time you grew up, Eve, and became adult, my dear? And open your eyes, you see. You've been brought up with rather narrow eyes, haven't you? Open your eyes, my dear good woman.
It's a beautiful tree. There's nothing wrong with it, is there, Eve? She said, I don't know, I haven't looked at it. Well, look at it, my dear. Oh, it was told you know what. It was a beautiful tree. Oh, the leaves were beautiful to look at. And the fruit was good to taste, and it was desirable to make one wise, for she said, what's harm in it? That's right, said Satan, you see. You have been brought up in a very restricted atmosphere, Eve, you know. Want to think, woman? Ah, yes, she said, but uh, no, no, she said, no, no, no, no, no, God has said, uh, I, I mustn't, we mustn't eat that because the day we eat thereof, we shall surely die.
Oh my foot, die, of course you won't die. Where do you get that notion from? Because you won't die. The real explanation is... that in the day you eat thereof, you shall be as God, Eve, knowing good and evil. Oh, I never thought that, says Eve, and here I am twiddling my thumbs in this garden, getting nowhere when I could be, what do you say, rising and, and, and, and being as God. And there was the cruel trickery of it, wasn't it? That was true, that alternative explanation.
When she ate it, she would be as God. That was perfectly true. The cruelty was that this alternative explanation was coupled with the plain, straightforward denial of God's word. And she took the alternative explanation and lost her, and I use the word deliberately, simple, that is one fold loyalty to God and his word.
It was a disaster. She found indeed she was as God knowing good and evil and had no power against the evil. And instead of rising in the universe, she found herself sinking to the level of an animal and worse, for now she had always been naked. So are the animals, of course, they don't bother. Eve discovered she was naked and was ashamed. I'm afraid of you, you see, says Paul, talking to the Corinthians, lest Satan do that kind of thing with you. And what he'll be at is to get you to accept explanations of life, of the universe, that destroy your intellectual loyalty to the Lord Jesus.
It is a big battle, isn't it? You go to your school, to your technical college, they discover you believe the Bible. What, you believe the Bible? And you a scientist? Goodness me. Do you know there are mistakes in the Bible? And what's the issue at stake when people talk like that? Well, fundamentally, the issue at stake is what our Lord himself said about the Bible being God's holy word.
Let us, with all our powers, investigate every branch of science we possibly can, and if you're interested in it, every branch of language and literature. What fun they are, what delights. But the only sure way of doing it is in loyalty to the Creator himself. And the study of the creation at any level that leads you to doubt the loyalty of the Creator, the truth of the Creator, the character of the Creator. Prove an unqualified disaster. What am I going to do then when I find a difficulty that I can't answer? The worldly man says to you, but have you any answer for this apparent contradiction in scripture?
You say, no, I don't know what the answer is. What am I, I'm out to do? They say they are, you're not scientific, you see. You're prepared to go on still believing. And you're not being unci- you're not being scientific. Oh, but wait a minute. Let me use another example. Forget the Bible for a moment. Here's Mr. X. He's a brilliant scientist. He has a pet scientific theory, you know. And in his laboratory, he labours long and hard to prove his scientific theory. And he nearly proved it when some other unfortunate scientist brings to light a whole lot of new facts that don't fit in with his theory.
What is he going to do as a scientist? Well, if he's a good scientist, he'll have to say, well, the new facts, you see, I must accept the new facts, and this is the game, and it destroys my original theory. Well, I can't help that, you see. I'm a scientist. They don't all behave exactly like that, like they should. Sometimes they sit on the new facts, but they they they shouldn't do if they're jolly good scientists. Uh, you see. And so he accepts the new facts just like that. Oh, brilliant. And of course, that's how he becomes a good scientist. Yes, as he's coming out of his laboratory and at lunch one day, some chap says, I'm sorry to hear about your wife, old boy. What do you mean, sorry to hear about my wife?
Uh, oh, why, sorry, I said the wrong thing. Well, go on, say what you've got to say. Well, everybody around here is talking, you know. Go on. Oh yes, they said, you know, that the other night, I mean, she was at such and such a hotel, and uh, well, well, I better not tell you anymore, you see. But then everybody knows it. Now what does the scientist say? Well, more facts. Yes, yes, well, I accept it, of course. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Uh, facts, you see, I've got to take facts. I think she would do that. If a scientist said that, what would you say? Well done, old boy, you are a brilliant scientist, ready to believe anything against your wife at the drop of a hat.
You'd say, poor fish. This isn't now dealing with atoms or something, it's dealing with a human personality and a character. And what you would expect a man to say is, what are you saying about my wife? I will not believe it. I know my wife. Oh, but the evidence. No, so I don't care about the evidence. I know my wife, and though the evidence looks damning, somewhere there'll be found an explanation of it. Of course, human wives can go wrong, can't they? But you see the difference between a scientist dealing with facts and a scientist dealing with the question of the loyalty of his wife and the character of his wife.
When it comes to Holy Scripture, behind this book stands the authority of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And ultimately, it's a question of what you think about his character. Suppose you can't answer all the difficulties. What are you to do? Well, you do what the man did about his wife. You say, I can't answer the difficulties, but I know Christ. And he cannot lie. And somewhere along the line, there is an explanation that would explain that difficulty.
I'm sure of it. You're not being unscientific. You're trusting the final arbiter. You're trusting the truth himself. Oh, young man, young woman, do beware of doing spiritual, the doing the spiritual splits. Believing in Christ in the Sunday school, at the breaking of bread, at the Bible class, and then going out to your laboratory and holding theories that imply Jesus Christ is not true. You cannot solve every difficulty, but history would teach us a lesson.
In the last century, there were people, for instance, let me take an old chestnut out of the fire. There were people that would say to believers, hmm, fancy believing the Old Testament. You know, the Old Testament talks of a king called Sargon. Hmm, there never was such a king called Sargon. There's no record of him anywhere in the ancient records. You see, the Bible has got it wrong way upside down. And believers who got overly impressed with that kind of thing and forgot their loyalty to the Lord would have said, oh well, the Bible's mistaken then. Oh well, how do I get over that? Well, Jesus Christ said it's the word of God. Well, perhaps Jesus Christ didn't know what he was talking about. And some theologians go that far nowadays, don't they?
They say that Jesus Christ was mistaken, you see, and you can't trust what he said because he just didn't know. But you know, learned archaeologists and things got working and one day uncovered an inscription, and there was old King Sargon, large as life, bless his heart. Would have been a poor job, wouldn't it, if you'd have got home to glory in those far off days before the inscription had been found. And the Lord said, hi, I want a word with you. You. I see in your essay you wrote that the Bible here is wrong, because it talks about a Sargon, and there's no historical evidence outside the Bible for Sargon, and you said it was wrong.
You said, well, Lord, so that was the evidence. I said, I've got the evidence here, man, look. Here is the, the evidence. What would you say to Christ then? Well, sorry, but you see, it did look as if. As if what? Well, you know, as if, as if. Well, my folks, we have to meet the Lord one day, you know. As C. S. Lewis said in his wonderful essay on the obstinacy in belief. He talks of a man who's been prosecuted in the courts for false dealings, very serious, and through all the lower courts and the appeal courts, the evidence has been against him.
It looks massive. And everybody has come to the conclusion that the man is a twister and a rogue. But at the last court, they find the extra evidence that acquits him, shows him to have been an honorable citizen all the way along. And as the man comes down the step of the court, a free and vindicated man, here comes one solitary friend of his who all the time through has said, but I do not accept that he's dishonorable. He is, I know him. I am sure one day he will be vindicated.
And now the man is vindicated, and the friend walks up to meet him and says, well done, I always knew you were true. And then comes some of his other friends, and they say, well, congratulations, aha. Of course, we have to admit that, you know, but the evidence did look very strong against you. Ha ha. Yes, that'd be a little bit embarrassing, wouldn't it? Oh, friends, so live that when you meet Christ, the first five minutes won't be embarrassing. Lord, I doubted your word because the evidence went against you.
Yes. We are espoused to a husband, Jesus Christ. We hold to his utter truthfulness and veracity. On that we cannot keep an open mind. Forbid the long harangue, but then these things are so desperately important. Let us turn now just to other things, practical matters. What can be done? If loyalties is so important, what can be done to foster loyalty along the road home to glory?
And there I simply call your attention to those lovely chapters, uh, that now follow, um, the chapters twenty eight and twenty nine, Where God speaks like this to the Israel in chapter twenty eight and verse two. command the children of Israel and say unto them, my oblation, my food for my offerings made by fire of a sweet savor unto me, shall you observe to offer me in their due season. And there follows a couple of chapters in Numbers that, when you first read them, sound as boring as you can possibly imagine. They're all about the feasts and festivals and the sacrifices that have to be offered, all in great detail, numerically spelt out time and time again with, you know, repetition, where you might have thought an odd et cetera would have s- sold you reading a lot of verses.
And there they are all spelled out. What's it all about? But listen to the way God speaks. These are, in fact, what we call the feasts of the Lord. But the particular emphasis that Numbers has is this, says God, in all these festivals you shall bring me my food, my oblation, my food for my offerings made by fire. As you offer these offerings, they are my food. That's a very curious concept. Does God have to be fed? Hmm.
He does, doesn't he? Oh yes, the mystery is great, but the God who gives us all things and in one sense needs nothing, that same God comes to us asking to be fed. Shall we not remember that lovely verse where our Lord Jesus stands outside and knocks upon the door, and he says, behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and I will dine with him and he with me. The Lord Jesus is asking to be fed. Oh, and here lies a wonderful secret of maintaining loyalty to the Lord Jesus.
How do you main loyal- maintain loyalty in a family anyway? How do husband and wife maintain loyalty all down the years. They tell me, who know these things, that in the House of Commons, the late s- the previous Speaker of the House, who was a delightful believer, and some of the MPs who were believers and their wives put on meetings particularly for the wives the of the MPs. Why so? Why? Because the MPs themselves are so often away from home, and all night sittings, and when they come home, they've got to attend their political surgeries, and therefore the wives see very little of them.
It's remarkable difficult, remarkably difficult to go on year after year and not see much of each other, never do many things together. You might as well be separate individuals. How do you maintain loyalty like? The casualty rate in marriages in those circles is exceedingly high for that very reason. And we are espoused to Christ. How are we going to keep loyalty going? Israel was espoused to God. How would they keep loyalty going? Well, the simple answer is they'll do things together. And please, says God, you will feed me.
Well, that's the simplest of all things to do, isn't it? You get to know somebody when you feed them. So God instituted a whole range of festivals. There were the rhythms of nature, morning and night. Then there was the weekly Sabbath, and then there was the feast of the new moon. And in those far off days, says God, you will mark all those occasions with offerings as occasions when you will come and feed me and entertain me in that temple of yours. We don't have to keep new moons and Sabbaths, do we?
But don't we have to entertain the Lord? How do you propose to maintain loyalty to the Lord, my dear fellow Christian, if you don't go out of your way to entertain him morning and night, weekly at the Lord's Supper, as the month begins, and as the year ends, say, what can I, how can I entertain? What do you mean, entertain the Lord? We've got nothing to talk about. Day by day and week by week and month by month, ah, when we pause and think, shall we not come and sing to him?
Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord my Savior. Morning by morning, new mercies I see, all I have wanted, thy hand has provided. Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord, to me. And as the recurrent pattern of daily life goes on, we find in it occasion to celebrate the Lord's faithfulness, and our hearts go out to him, don't they? In faithfulness. In Israel, there was not only the rhythm of daily life, there was the rhythm of redemption. Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Feast of Trumpets, Feast of the Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles, and on each occasion Israel came and they celebrated the great events of redemption, and as they did it, they fed the heart of God.
How simple, how wise God is to get those people doing things with him together, that their loyalty might be deepened. Is it not so? Passover. And we set aside a little time to come and feed the Lord. Well, what should we talk about? We've got to entertain him. It's a bit difficult sometimes with people, isn't it, to know what to talk about. What do we talk about to the Lord? Well, why not begin about Passover and talk to the Lord about Passover? But Passover, you say, what about Passover? Well, how Christ our Passover was sacrificed to us, and as you begin to think, then the old fire begins to burn, doesn't it?
And the wonderful, wonderful loyalty of God that gave his son that we might be spared the judgment, and we're free. And the sheer remembrance of it begins to deepen the bands of loyalty. There's Pentecost. What about Pentecost then? What's that all about? Do you know? Well, I hope you do. Of course you do, because if the Lord were to turn up tonight and you got munching your cream cake with the Lord at the table, like he had a habit of doing with Mary and Martha, and the Lord starts to talk about Pentecost, it would be a bit embarrassing, wouldn't it, to say, sorry, Lord, but what are you talking about, a new record or something?
I don't know what Pentecost is. Pentecost, it's the feast of firstfruits. Oh, it was a picture in Old Testament of the great day of Pentecost in the New, when the Holy Spirit came down from heaven and came to us as the firstfruits. What a thing to talk about with the Lord. Lord, firstfruits, Lord. Marvelous to have the gift of the Holy Spirit. Lord, what do you mean exactly when you say it's the firstfruits? Well, of all I'm going to give you, my child, all those wonderful things that lie in the future, and you already have the Holy Spirit by my grace. Ah, and as we talk with him, loyalty gets deepened.
There's a great feast of tabernacles, when at the end of the year they'd reap the corn harvest and they'd reap the grape harvest. And they sat themselves in kind of booths that they made out of the leafy trees, and they looked back over the way that the Lord had led them. And then the prophets helped them to look forward over the great ultimate feast of tabernacles, when God would make the nations a feast of fat things, of wines on the lees, when God would wipe away all tears and swallow up death in victory. As Israel listened to their prophets. Ah, yes, yes, that was real. They had been redeemed out of Egypt. Is it true that now there's a glorious future?
And their loyalty to the Lord was deepened. So it is with us, isn't it? You say, but all those things, the Feast of Tabernacles, they're in the future for us when the Lord comes and wipes away all tears and swallows up death in victory. Isn't that a bit unreal for the average teenager to take in? I mean, it's all about the future. Oh, but my dear young teenager, have you never been on holiday? Don't to Malaga or somewhere, and you're going this next July, and half the fun of it is sitting at home with your toes roasting in front of the fire of a cold February night with all the brochures, and there's Malaga. Look, that's a very hotel we're going to be in, and that's the blue, blue sea.
Marvelous, and we're going there, and you're coming with me, and what should we do when we get there? Oof. What a, what fun it is, isn't it? And it's all anticipating what you're going to do, and it binds a friendship together. I tell you, it's a sacred thing to sit by your toes by the fire roasting on a cold February night with this book in your hand and be talking to the Lord about what he's going to do. Ah, when we get home to glory, my, it would make your heart well up, wouldn't it? What we're going to do with him and he with us. And as we think of it, it gets the loyalty going, doesn't it?
But my brother, this is a cruel world. If you don't do it, if you don't entertain the Lord in your heart and home, if you don't entertain him in your life, if you just meet him odd occasions, you're going to find it very difficult to remain loyal to him. Now Moses says Numbers is about to go home, says God to Moses. Moses, you're about to die. One thing I'd like you to do, Moses, before you actually die. Oh, what is that?
Avenge the Midianites. Avenge Israel of the Midianites, Moses, and then you must come home. In that, uh, order lie two very poignant things. Moses had to go home, you know, before Israel got into the Promised Land. Why? Because earlier he had rebelled against the Lord, and it couldn't be undone, and he reaped the consequence. Oh, my brother, my sister, there are sins which, if we commit them, they will have consequences for the rest of our lives, and we shall never be able to undo it.
That's solemn, isn't it? You say, Mr. Preacher, don't depress me further. I have done such sins. I have to live with their consequences. Ah, there's hope, isn't there? You see, when we have made grievous mistakes, like Israel did when they joined themselves to Baal Peor and were disloyal to the Lord, and God had to discipline them. Then, before they went home, God said, now look here, Moses, I want you to give my people a chance to put it all right, to correct that mistake.
So they went and they fought the Midianites, and they won the victory, and they brought in the great spoil, and they gave part of it to the Lord, and the rest they kept. My brother, my sister, we're going home, aren't we? There are some things we shall never be able to undo this side of glory. We won't need to despair. Have we made big mistakes? And now we're sorry. You can make capital out of it. Having learned from the mistake and now determined by God's grace never to do this again and to recover what you lost as far as it is possible.
Oh, what rich lessons that can be learned from it. What spoil can be taken from it. You, my brother, in your youth you went astray, perhaps. Oh, bitter the tears, you can't undo it now, but you've come back to the Lord. Oh, what spoil for yourself that thing has been that has goaded you to go on with the Lord and keep things right. And what advice you can give to the younger set, can't you? Or what victories over the enemy that you can now get because of your exercise about the mistake that you once made. There will be much riches in glory.
Some of the riches will be the result of our exercise of soul to recover from the mistakes that we made in life. And so we must keep on fighting, mustn't we, right to the end? And with these fi- final observations, I must close and let you go. We shall have to fight right to the end of the journey. So it was that in the very first verses of the Book of Numbers, God reminded Israel that they must number the people all that are ready to go forth to war. And he made it very clear that getting through this wilderness in the end would be a battle.
Some of them fought very honorably. And when we come to the end of the book, there is a serious but somewhat amusing incident. We're told that when they got near at last to the promised land, they had quite a few battles, and they conquered quite, quite a few kings, and they got to themselves a large bit of territory on the eastern side of the Jordan. It was a territory for cattle. And Reuben and some of the others, they looked at this and said, hi, why don't we settle down here, do you see? Be just the place for our cattle and all our goods and chattels. Let's settle down here. The Lord surely has given us this bit of land with all this grass. We'll settle down here. So along they came to Moses, and poor old Moses, he was getting old, wasn't he?
And he, he, I mustn't say he blew his top because that would be irreverent, but he, he nearly flew off the handle or whatever dignified people do in those circumstances, you'll see. Jesus, you lot of sinners, you. Your fathers did that. Don't you remember at Kadesh Barnea when I sent the spies into the land, and they came back and they discouraged the people, and they wouldn't go into the land? And here you are, lot of racist sinners, that's what you are, bad. You're going to do the same thing again. You're going to refuse to go in. You're going to discourage the people, and God will, will destroy us, you evil crowd. Oh, calm down, they said.
Calm down, Moses, good man, just a minute. We're not as evil as you think. God himself has given us this grass and this land here. And what did you say? We've got to go and fight? We're prepared to go and fight, Moses. We'll just leave our little ones here and our wives, and we will go in front of the whole of Israel, armed for the battle, and we'll go over Jordan, and we shall not rest till every Israelite has come into his inheritance on the other side. And when they've done that, we'll come back here and dwell with this grass. Oh, says Moses, sorry. Sorry, I got a bit worked up, but you know how it is, you know, you can sometimes. Oh, well, if you're prepared to do that, said he, that's all right.
But remember, if you're not prepared to go on warring right over Jordan until you get into the inheritance and you settle down here, well, then you won't be allowed even to enjoy this bit of the inheritance. What kind of a lesson is that for us? My brother, my sister, we've got to fight. We haven't yet attained, have we? And we must press on. I don't suppose I'm talking to anybody like this tonight, but let's suppose some imaginary person.
You say it? And you know you're forgiven? And you're justified by faith, and you have eternal life, and you'll never perish. You say, yes, my brother, and when I got converted, you know, my family didn't like it, and I had to, I had to, um, go through quite a lot of battles, but I stuck to my guns, and I'm saved, you see, and I have eternal life, and I shall never perish. Yes, I said, I didn't see you at the prayer meeting, nor yet the Bible reading last week. Oh, you say, I don't counter this, you see. Some, some folks take these things a lot further than others, you know. Now, I'm content to know I'm born again, you see. I, I have eternal life, and I shall never perish, and one of these days I shall be in heaven. But all that other thing, you know, church truth and, and all those things and prophecy and things they go in for.
Well, you know, I'm not interested in that. Uh, and sanctification, yes, and getting more like the Lord, you say, well, no, I, I intend to be just like I am, you see. You are. Wait a minute. Who gave you permission to settle down like that? Was salvation your idea? Wasn't, was it? It was the Lord's idea. And, says Paul, agreeing with Moses, it's God who got hold of us.
It's Christ who took hold of us, and when he took hold of us, he had a goal in view. We're not allowed to settle down until you get at that goal, you know. We're not allowed to say, oh, well, I- I'm sure I'm saved and I got eternal life, so I don't go in for these other things. Oh, but my brother, you have no choice. We have to follow on so that we might at last attain to the goal that Christ has in view. What happens if I don't? Well, I shall do what Moses said that the Reubenites would do.
He said, look here, chaps, if you stop down here, you'll discourage all the others, won't you? And you know, if I don't go on with the Lord, I'm discouraging the others of the Lord people, am I not? Come, if heaven is real, then I must not stop my progress, I must not stop my fighting, I must stand solidly with the people of God until at last we attain the resurrection from the dead.
For do you not see, enjoy all God's blessings now that he gives us, but the extent to which I shall enjoy heaven and enjoy the inheritance when I get there, will in part depend on the progress I have made in divine things in this life. That's been an extraordinarily long sermon, hasn't it? You are the most patient people I ever met.
And then these things are real. Oh, my brother, help me. My sister, help me. In the days when I would lose heart and fail to press on and be too soon content. It's you that going to help me, isn't it? When I see your zeal, enjoying the Lord, of course, but in another sense, refusing to be content, always pressing forward, that you might grasp ever more fully the purpose and the goal for which Christ saved you. And when I see your zeal in the vanguard, leading the hosts of God's people, fighting the enemy, urging us on to bigger exploits and further attacks and greater possessions.
Then you'll rouse the courage of a laggard even like me, and encourage me too to press on, on my way to glory. The Lord help us thus to learn the lessons of his word for our eternal benediction. Shall we pray?
