In The Wilderness: Too Much?

Yet you say, I will give them meat and they will eat for a month. If fox and herds were slaughtered for them, would they have enough? Or if all the fish in the sea were caught for them, would they have enough? The Lord answered Moses, Is the Lord's arm weak? Now you will see whether or not what I have promised will happen to you. Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. He brought 70 men from the elders of the people and had them stand before the tent. Then the Lord descended in the cloud and spoke to them. He took some of the spirit who was on Moses and placed the spirit on the 70 elders. As the spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they never did it again. Two men had remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other Medad. The spirit rested on them, and they were not among those listed, but had not gone out to the tent. They had prophesied in the camp. A young man ran and reported to Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. Joshua, son of Nun, assistant to Moses since his youth, responded, Moses, my Lord, stop them. But Moses asked him, are you jealous on my account? If only all the Lord's people were prophets and the Lord would place His Spirit on them? Then Moses returned to the camp along with the elders of Israel. A wind sent by the Lord came up and blew quail in from the sea. It dropped around all of the camp. They were flying three feet off the ground for about a day's journey in every direction. The people were up all that day and night and all the next day gathering the quail. The one who took the least gathered 60 bushels, and they spread them all around the camp. When the meat was still between their teeth and before it was chewed, the Lord's anger burned against the people, and the Lord struck them with a very severe plague. In that place, Kibroth Hatavah, because they buried the people who had craved the meat. From Kibroth Hatavah, the people moved on to Hazeroth and remained there. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. — Numbers 11:18-35

Have you ever heard the phrase, "God will never give you more than you can handle"? Anybody heard this phrase before? This is an old one. It's a very tired one. I think Christians make the strangest claims to people when they are suffering. And this is one of those bumper sticker theology statements. I've seen this on social media. I've seen this on greeting cards. I've even seen this on cross stitch. Does anybody even cross stitch? Is that a thing still? Okay, some people do. But is this in the Bible? No. It's not in the Bible.

At best, it's sort of a riff maybe off of a verse in First Corinthians that says:

God will never tempt you beyond what you can bear, but will always provide a way out. — 1 Corinthians

But that is not the same thing at all. That is not the same thing. And in fact, that statement—God will never give you more than you can bear—the opposite of that little piece of theological fluff is proven all over Scripture. I mean, I can think of lots of people who were given way more than they can bear. I want you to think about David or Esther or Joseph or Naomi or Hosea or Hannah, Daniel, Job. I can keep going. Think about Jesus. He was on the cross, He's crying out:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? — Psalm 22:1

Maybe a little more than He could bear. You have Paul in the New Testament who says:

I don't want you to be misinformed about the suffering we've had when we were in Asia. We experienced there great pressure far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. — 2 Corinthians 1:8

Ouch. I mean, that's a strong statement. And yet, if there's ever a passage where God gives people more than they can bear, it's right here in Numbers chapter 11.

So this is a two-part sermon. Today is part two. Last week we had part one, the beginning part of chapter 11. I'll give you a little bit of the history that leads us up to what we just read. The people are in the desert, they're following God from Sinai toward the promised land, and grumbling—a pandemic of grumbling begins to break out in this camp. It starts with what the passage calls the riffraff. I know we chuckled about that last week because that refers to actually a particular group of people, people who are non-Jewish and yet left Egypt with the Jews on their way out. I think they probably saw this as their ticket. Let's go with them. Well, the grumbling then is sort of caught by all the Israelites. And there's this scene we read in the first part of chapter 11, where everybody's standing at the door of their tent and they're complaining and they're grumbling, and they remember with very selective memory: we remember all the great free fish we had to eat back in Egypt, back in slavery. It's questionable how free that fish was, but that's what they remember. And then it spreads to even Moses.

And this is the background of this passage. And today we're looking at sort of the rest of the story.

How does God answer the grumbling of Moses and the grumbling of the people? This is what we're going to see in this passage. God answers both groups with an overabundance, with more than they can handle. And it's odd because we're going to see why. Why does God do this?

I want you to see this morning that God is up to good for Moses and God is up to good for this people and God is up to good even for you as we wrestle with more than we can handle in our abundance. This morning, we're going to look at two traps: the trap of self sufficiency and then the trap of stuff sufficiency. And then we're going to look at the freedom of God sufficiency. I'm taking my outline from a friend of mine who's a pastor in Atlanta who gave me permission to use this for this morning.

The Trap of Self Sufficiency

First, the trap of self sufficiency. This is an answer to Moses' complaint about the people. Remember Moses' complaint from last week. He says to God, when the people are complaining, "Why did you burden me with all these people? Did I conceive them? Did I bear them as a mother? Did I nurse them?" If you're going to treat me like this, Moses really says this, "If you're going to treat me like this, please kill me now. If you have found favor with you, don't let me see my misery anymore."

Now those words I described last week are filled with self pity. But there's a mistake behind what Moses is saying because over and over he's taking descriptors about who God is and how God has promised to be with the people and applying that to himself. God has never come to him and said, "Moses, you are to be the provider and sustainer of this people."

Think about the language that's used in scripture to describe God. We sang a song about this: God is a good father. We read in Isaiah 49 some of the language from here:

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast? Have no compassion on the child she is born? Though she may forget, I, God, will not forget you. — Isaiah 49

God is like a mother toward his children. And God has never said to Moses, "All up to you, all on your shoulders." But this has sort of been a theme with Moses and his relationship with God.

When God called Moses to the ministry in Exodus, Moses has this argument with God like, "This is too much for me. I don't want to do this. I don't want the responsibility for all these people on me." And over and over again, we see in Moses' life, he keeps thinking, "This is all on my shoulders."

So much so that he's rebuked by his pagan father-in-law named Jethro. Jethro observes Moses spending all day, dawn to dusk, hearing the complaints and the problems of the people and trying to arbitrate between them. And Jethro comes to him and says, "What are you doing? Appoint other people, delegate, give away some of this." And he appoints 70 elders who help him carry the load with hearing the needs of the people.

In Exodus chapter 24, they come to the base of the mountain, Sinai, where God's going to give them the 10 Commandments and God says, "Oh no, Moses, don't come up here by yourself. Bring the 70 elders of Israel." Again, Moses, this is shared leadership. And yet over and over again, here's Moses forgetting that it's not all on his shoulders.

And that's what's going on here in this passage. Remember the Pixar movie, WALL-E? WALL-E pictures this little tiny robot that's responsible for cleaning up this planet that's a complete garbage dump by himself. And I think that's what Moses is feeling here. Moses has taken all this on himself as if God has said, "This is your responsibility. This is what I called you to do." And what's being revealed here is self pity in Moses' heart that actually comes from a place of self reliance, self trust.

God answers Moses' complaint here in a really over the top way, in abundance, in giving an excess of something. Now, what does God give an excess of to the leaders of Israel? He gives an excess of the Holy Spirit. And this is a little bizarre to us for where we stand in history because do we think of the Holy Spirit as some kind of rare commodity? Like there's just so little of it, we need to be really careful, we need to ration out the Holy Spirit. Do we think that way? No, of course not.

We stand in this place since Pentecost, since the ascension of Jesus and the days after that and then the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost that goes out in Acts two on all the people. And if you're a believer in Jesus now, you have the Spirit. So we think of the Spirit as in great supply. But that was not where they stood in history. They didn't have a fully formed idea of what the Trinity was; they didn't understand the Trinity. And so what they saw of the Spirit was the Spirit is given in sporadic and small and temporary doses. It's not yet the gift on all the people.

But the key point of the story is that God comes to Moses and says, "I'm going to take some of the Spirit that I've given to you and I'm going to pour that out on all of the elders of Israel." And I'm going to call this Pentecost 1.0 because this is a foreshadowing of what comes in the book of Acts.

Now, what does it mean that the elders then, when they receive the spirit, prophecy in the camp? Something happens here that's different from maybe what we would think of. We think of prophecy as somebody telling your fortune, somebody reading somebody's palm—"Oh, you're going to have a long life, you're going to have a short life, you're going to have a life filled with toil and hardship, or a life filled with affluence." But that's not what's in view in prophecy here.

What's being described here is some kind of ecstatic experience of God's power that's visible and obvious to everybody around them. Think about maybe you've seen people in Pentecostal churches respond with over displays of emotion and even a physical response. I think that's what's being described here. There's something that everybody could see in the giving of the Spirit to these elders. Everybody around them could say, "You have what Moses had." And everybody can see it.

But here's the funny part—it doesn't stop there. Did you notice the names that sound like they're from the Cat in the Hat in the passage? Eldad and Medad. I love how they rhyme; they're supposed to rhyme. But what happens in this passage is that there's an overabundance. The spirit is not just given to the 70 elders who are gathered with Moses, but to yokels back at camp, to ordinary people. Eldad and Medad—they also experience the pouring out of the spirit. There's an overflow. There's an abundance. They're catching some Holy Spirit shrapnel. There's like extra overflow of the spirit and these two people are given the spirit as well and they're in the camp. They're not even with the elders and they begin to prophesy.

See, what is God doing? He's giving, again, an overabundance. More than you can handle, Moses. He's showing them there's no scarcity with God. There's overabundance.

Why Abundance?

Now, I want you to see what God is up to in abundance. Why? Why does God give Moses and Aaron here and the people more than they can handle so it spills over into like ordinary old Eldad and Medad? Why? And it's this: God is trying to detox his people from Egypt. Remember, this is what we've been saying throughout this series. The book of Exodus is where God delivers his people from Egypt. The book of Numbers is where God delivers Egypt out of his people. The influence, the thinking, the orientation toward life—he's detoxing his people. He's trying to take Egypt out of them and out of Moses, his leader. He's exposing their hearts.

In other words, what is behind Moses' self-pity in this passage? It's a form of pride that's based in self-reliance and self-trust. And in case you think that you are here to hear a sermon to you this morning, I am talking 100% just to me this morning. Because I really struggle with pride and the pride that shows up in the kind of self-pity that comes from self-trust and self-reliance. It's all up to me. It's all on my shoulders. This is me.

And I want to invite you to ask this question of yourself: Do you live this way?

It's funny—some Israelites get wind of the overflow that the yokels, Medad and Eldad, they got the spirit and they go back to the tent of meeting. They run back up to Moses and Joshua and they say, "Guess what's happened back at camp? Eldad and Medad, they're prophesying." And Joshua gets upset about this. He gets jealous. He says, "Moses, you've got to stop this. You've got to stop these guys from doing that."

But Moses' response is golden. He just kind of gets it at this point. He's like, "Man, I wish everybody had the Spirit. I wish everybody were prophets."

This is the residue of Egypt. This is the residue of Egypt that God is trying to purge from the hearts of his people, and especially from his leaders, Moses and Joshua. And here's how you know you're operating out of the Egyptian mindset: when you think it's all up to you. When you're filled with self-pity because you think God has called you to carry all this weight that you can't carry by yourself. And it reveals a heart of self-reliance and pride and self-trust in you and in me. It's Egyptian thinking. That's what God is showing them. That's what Moses is kind of shamed into admitting. "Oh, that's what's going on."

Now as I said, what happens in Numbers 11 is kind of Pentecost 1.0. These people can't imagine what was to come at Pentecost 2.0. In the New Testament, in Acts chapter two, where Moses said, "I wish everybody had the spirit"—that comes true.

I mean, the prophet Joel saw this and he said:

In the last days I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your young men and women will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on the servants, both men and women, I'll pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. — Joel

This is the great abundance that we have in our church. It's the great abundance which we live out of in the New Testament church era. What Moses hoped for is what Jesus guaranteed. We got plenty of Holy Spirit. We are not in short supply in the church. And that's good news.

But I've got to caution you for the application of this. Because there's a lot of Egypt in me and there's a lot of Egypt in you. And just like God is doing with Israel, here's what He's up to in us. God is teaching us the trap of self sufficiency, self pity, of self reliance. It's all up to me.

One of the things I've noticed about our church is that our church is filled with a lot of very accomplished, educated, successful people who've done a lot of things. Some of you have overcome amazing obstacles to be where you are in your life. And one of the great things about that is also one of the bad things about that. Because it can lead us to a place of self reliance and self trust and pride.

In the New Testament, the book of Galatians chapter six says something that sounds like a contradiction. It holds up these two statements:

Each of you should carry your own load, but bear one another's load or burden. — Galatians 6

Same word for burden, burden, load and load. But in the Greek, those are not the same word. It sounds like a contradiction, but it's not. Because what's pictured there is each of you should carry your own load—which we can think of like your elementary school backpack. You should carry a load that's appropriate for who you are at this point in your life. And yet, each of you should carry each other's burdens. And what's pictured there is not a backpack but think about those ancient millstones. Giant round stones are used for crushing grain. We're called to bear one another's burdens.

One of the questions for me and for you is, are we trying to carry alone things that God has not called us to carry? That's an evidence of Egypt in us. What burdens are you trying to carry by yourself that God hasn't asked you to carry? What are you bearing right now alone that no one else knows, you don't share, you're not public about?

Sequoia Trees and Interconnected Roots

Sequoia trees, giant sequoias, are maybe the oldest living organism on earth—some over 3,000 years old. These trees, you can see them out in California, grow up to 27 stories. Around the base, you've probably seen pictures of people holding hands, like a huge family holding hands around the base of these trees. They can grow up to 36 feet in diameter.

And yet, one of the marvels of a Sequoia tree is that its roots only go to five to six feet into the ground. Do you know that? Five to six feet down. Why do they only go five to six feet down? Well, because the secret of Sequoia trees is their roots are interconnected. They connect to other Sequoia trees. And so they are able to grow to great heights in very shallow soil because they're interdependent. They rely on each other.

Can I ask you a question? Are you a person who's okay with being served? With not always being a person who's giving? We love to be the go-to person. We love to be the giver, we love to be the one serving. But for many of us it's really hard to receive.

For many of us we keep our burdens secret, we don't trust other people, we don't allow other people in our church to know about what's going on with us. One of the things that frustrates me the most is when people, you ask them how they're doing, they're like, "Good. I'm doing good." And I'm like, "No, you're not." That's residue of Egypt. This is left over from Southern Bible Belt culture. This is also left over from our own hearts that are self reliant and self trusting.

Contrast the giant sequoia with the oak trees we see around Raleigh. We're the city of oaks, right? Massive beautiful oak trees. And yet every time there's a big storm, you're driving around Raleigh, you'll see a couple of these that are falling over. Now compared to sequoias, oak trees have massive root systems. And yet, this is the lesson: what stands alone, falls alone.

Are you an oak or a sequoia? Do you let other people in? Do you trust in yourself alone? Do you have this problem with self pity and self sufficiency?

I mean, what is God sending you right now that's too much for you? I guarantee in this room, we are lots of us dealing with lots of things that are too much for us to bear by ourselves. For some of you, it may be sickness or suffering of some sort. It may be caring for aging parents. It may be lots of little kids. That seems to be a pandemic in our church. It may be a growing ministry. It may be financial difficulties.

But whatever it is, many of us are carrying burdens that are too much for us. And will we trust one another? Will we allow one another to bear burdens with us? This is really, really important for us as a church. The trap of self-sufficiency—more than you can handle.

The Trap of Stuff Sufficiency

The second trap we see in this passage is the trap of stuff sufficiency. If the first part is God's answer to Moses' complaint, this is an answer to the people's complaint. Again, it's a bizarre story, right? God answers the complaints of the Israelites and the riffraff who want meat with an abundance of meat. This unbelievable form of God's provision.

Now, remember, all along God has been feeding them with manna. And as I said last week, manna translated into English—it's like a candy bar, a Whatchamacallit. Because manna literally in Hebrew is "what is it?" They didn't have a word for it, so they just called it "what is it?" Right?

So they have lots of whatchamacallit on the ground and they're supposed to go out every day and gather a little bit of whatchamacallit, just what they need for that day. They'll bring it back, crush it as a seed, make it into a powder, cook it up, and it tastes sweet and flaky, like it's been cooked in oil. As I said last week, donuts. That's what we're supposed to think of when we think of manna—God provides donuts to people. And then what are they saying? We want meat.

Now, before we make fun of the Israelites too much, I got to be honest about this. We have a family full of boys and I am not the only person where if there's no meat at dinner, it's like we didn't really eat dinner, right? I mean, that's kind of how me and several of our sons are. So much so that one of our sons years ago was hanging out with this other family who observed a vegan diet and it's dinner time and he's like, "I don't do vegetables." And I'm like, "I'm right with you. I have vegetables, but I really need my meat, right?"

So let's not be too hard on the Israelites. But the surprising response of God to their complaint is—what? More than they can handle. Meat. An abundance of meat, a ridiculous amount of meat.

Now here's the cool detail of this passage you may not realize in English: God answers both of these problems in the same way. In the first part, God gives them an overflow of Ruach. In Hebrew, that's the Spirit. But Ruach also can be translated as wind. And so twice in this passage, God provides an abundance of ruach—first in the form of the Spirit, second in the form of the wind that blows in all these quail, these barely flying birds that can fly only three feet off the ground in an enormous, ridiculous quantity.

And so God sends these two abundances to His people. And what's He doing? Again, it's to reveal what's in their hearts. There's a residue from Egypt. There's still too much Egypt in His people. Because what are they saying? "We're sick of all this manna. God, why can't we have some meat?"

Let me ask you this question. What material things do you say are must-haves for you? I mean, if you're going to be gone from home for a while, you're going on a trip, you're going to go visit family, you're going to go somewhere, what are the things that you're like, "I got to have this"? Your "if onlys," your must-haves, your "as long as they've got"—I mean, let's be honest. What do you need in the morning? Coffee. Yeah, your coffee, right? You got to have your coffee. You got to have it the way you like it too. You can't just have any coffee. Nobody wants gas station coffee—we got a special coffee in the right form.

What about at night? What do you want to do to unwind? You got to have your shows, right? You got to have your shows, all your little creature comfort things. All the things that we talk so much about our shows in this church, right? We talk about all the world watching. You want your little glass of wine, right? You got to have your must-have. Got to have my little glass of wine. Like all the things. And there are so many versions of this. Gotta exercise. Or you know, gotta—what are all the things that we're like, "If only," "as long as."

Now these are all good things. None of these are opioids, right? None of these are horrible crime things. They're all good gifts. But we take little things and they become essential things, and the Bible has a special word for that, which is called idolatry. Which isn't, you know, worshiping little statues. I mean, you can go down this afternoon if you want to walk around downtown Raleigh, all the statues, you can do that. That's not really idolatry.

Idolatry are all the little things that we say "if only," "as long as," "must have," that we make into ultimate things that become our source of contentment. "What I need to be happy today. This is what I need." But this is the thing that we don't see. It's really dangerous. It's really dangerous when we set our hearts on material goods that become too important to us.

In fact, in this passage, verse 20, this is what's revealed to them. It's a spiritual issue. It's rejecting the Lord among you. So one of the means by which God exposes and roots out idolatry is actually giving us what we want. Giving us those things that we want. This is actually Romans chapter one where it's a form of God's judgment to hand people over to their desires and say, Go crazy. This is what you really want. This is not going to satisfy. This is not going to give you life. Allowing people to see what they want so they can see it's not what they need. And the same dynamic is going on in Numbers chapter 11.

God provides an abundance of quail. Remember, God says, I'm going to give you quail for the next month. Every day you can go out and get quail. But what did the people do? They go out and they begin harvesting quail. And it says, even the smallest amount gathered, somebody gathered was 60 bushels. Now, to remind you of what a bushel basket looks like because we don't traffic in bushels, this is what you do when you go pick apples somewhere. You ask, they're going be like, You want to buy a bushel or half bushel? I'm like, I don't know what that is. Well, that's what that is. Right? The big baskets that you buy, 60 baskets of dead birds in one day. They get so much, what do they do? They spread them out in the camp on the ground to dry them out, to try to preserve this. Now, this is where the phrase maybe up to our eyeballs comes from. Being up to your eyeballs or something, they are up to their eyeballs in quail.

I want to show you what's happening here. They go out instead of gathering a little bit every day like they were supposed to do with manna, and they go back and gather an obscene amount. An obscene amount. How do Egyptians gather things? Remember back to the story of Exodus? They build storehouses. There's a famine coming, we need to build some giant storehouses. Now, that's a different story, but that's what gets in the mindset of these Israelites. There's always a scarcity. Got to make sure we have enough for tomorrow.

Remember, they go out, they're supposed to gather manna, just enough for today. Some of them even when God says that, go out and gather extra. And we know from the book of Exodus what happens to the manna that they gather and they keep overnight? It rots. It's full of bugs. God's like, I'm trying to show you. Just trust me. Trust me for today and I'll give you what's for today. But the Israelites do the same thing here that they did with the manna. They go and they gather way more.

And see the storehouse mentality is what plagues the Israelites and it's what plagues us. Can we trust God? Is God sufficient? And so, this is what happens. They get so much quail that they end up God sends this disease upon us. And they call the place where all these people start dying of this sickness. They named the place Kibroth Hattaavah, which means graves of craving. They ate themselves to death. That's what happens in this story.

God's Anger and God's Love

Now, want to ask you this, why is God so angry? God seems angry on the regular in the book of Numbers. And I want to remind you of why that is because there are two types of anger. There's the anger that we associate with kind of blowing off steam, flying off the handle anger that just can be destructive. But there's another kind of anger that comes from a place of love. This is when parents love their child but hate the alcoholism in their child. This is when parents love their child but they hate the addict in the child. This is when parents, and the best of parents, see this and what they see is something that's destroying that person from the inside out as their love drives their hatred. Their love drives their sense of life. This is not okay.

And in case you think I'm making this up, let me tell you what Eldad and Medad what their names mean in Hebrew. This is just a little Easter egg for you. Why do we need to know the names of these two yokels who get the extra part of the spirit? Why do we need know the names of Eldad and Medad? Because Medad means beloved and Eldad means beloved of God. And I think this is a little Easter egg that God is like, Hey, can we just throw this in here just so you know where my anger is coming from in this story? It's coming from a place of love. God loves his people and he's out to purge out of us what's the residue of Egypt and God loves us.

You know, when we finally learned that our stuff doesn't satisfy, it's really a gift. You ever had a new car and you get a scratch on it, that feeling you get? That pity your stomach like, Oh, that's a gift. What about when you go on the dream vacation and there's bad weather? Doesn't turn out to be the dream. It's a gift. You know, what about when you have kids and they turn out to be kids? It's a gift. Right?

What about when you buy new clothes and you're so excited about this outfit and then you put it on the same body? Like, "Oh, it's the same body. That's just me." You buy the car and new car smell is quickly replaced with sippy cup smell.

Listen, we are up to our eyeballs in stuff. We are people who are very clutchy. We've got all kinds of stuff that we're like "must haves." And the way of this world is just like the seagulls in Finding Nemo. You remember what they say? "Mine, mine, mine, mine." That's right. That's what we do. That's where we live.

And what is God up to in our abundance? He is showing them their hearts. He's showing you your hearts because He loves you. Because He loves them. One pastor, Sam Albury, puts it this way: "If you look deep in your heart, you won't find the solution to your angst. You're going to find the cause of it." Because we have cravings—we crave great cravings. We too are El Dads and Me Dads. And God gives us more than we can handle so we learn to love Him.

Is God Enough?

So here's the last part: freedom and self-sufficiency. You know what my favorite word in this whole passage is? Right here in verse 22, it's repeated twice. The word enough. And the question here is: Is God enough? Is God going to be enough?

We hear the word "enough" all the time. One writer, David Zoll, says, "If you listen carefully, you hear that word everywhere, especially when it comes to anxiety or loneliness, exhaustion, division. You hear about people scrambling to be successful enough, or happy enough, or thin enough, wealthy enough, influential enough, desired enough, charitable enough, good enough." And we sometimes believe that we're going to reach some point in our lives where we'll get enough, where we can finally be enough.

And the question today really is: Is God enough? Is God enough for us? Can we trust Him? Can we rely on Him?

Three Things We Learned

I want to push three things at the end of this. Three things we learned from this passage.

First, God is a God of abundance. It's been a lie since the Garden of Eden that we believe all the time—that God traffics in scarcity. God is the one who invented the abundance mentality. God is like, "Try me. I'm more than enough." And we believe God somehow is out to deprive us. God is a good father.

Second, we can't handle abundance and we really can't handle scarcity. Americans think we can't handle scarcity, but we can handle abundance—yes, please. I'll take a little bit of that. When you get home, look up Proverbs 30:8. Because our hearts honestly can't handle either one very well. We're at our best when we're dependent and trusting in God and trusting other people. We're dependent on other people.

The last thing we see in this passage: this is why we need both a Savior and a Shepherd. We need a Savior to save us from us. And we need a Shepherd who we can follow day by day.

You know, an anti-Numbers passage is when Jesus goes into the desert. He's sent out by the Ruach of God, the Spirit of God, to be tempted for forty days. And over and over again, where Israel fails the test, Jesus—alt Israel—He passes the test over and over again. The devil tempts him and he's like, "No, you don't tempt the Lord your God." He comes and says, "Make these stones into bread." Jesus is like, "Live by every word that comes from God. That's what I need. That's what sufficiency and trust looks like."

And everywhere that Israel fails, Jesus shows us what obedience is. And that's credited to you if you're a believer. That's given to you, counted you righteous in that way. And he shows us how much we need a Shepherd. How much we struggle. We are filled with self-sufficiency and stuff-sufficiency, and God is constantly trying to lead us to a place where we learn God-sufficiency.

I'm going to close this sermon today with a video—my favorite video from last year. It's a picture and—don't worry, it's a video but it's in another language, you're not going to be able to understand it—you'll get the point. Because we're sheep. We're sheep who are constantly getting ourselves in places where we're stuck and we need the Lord.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, let's pray together. Father, we confess this is us. Our hearts are so prone to wander from you. Thank you for your word. This is an uncomfortable passage for us that reminds us of how quickly we are to abandon you, to trust in self or stuff, to believe we can handle both scarcity and abundance, to live lives that are independent of one another and particularly independent of you.

Lord, we thank you that you are both savior—you save us from self—and you are also shepherd. We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen.

Let's stand and sing and respond to God's word.