Uh I don't know about you but um when it comes to building things there are different kinds of builders as guys especially I recently bought a corner desk to work uh from home to keep my laptop and like with most things uh like IKEA or other places it comes in a box and pieces and you have similar to them right and I look at the I look at the parts and I go straight to work. It's simple. Seems so simple, so easy, right? Especially since I'm not very good with my hands either. I'm very pathetic about it. And right after I think, just when I think I'm done, I look at the box. There's still two more pieces of wood. There's like a half a dozen screws. I don't know where they belong. And then I look at the furniture. Uh, some parts are upside down things that should be in the front or facing the rear. And the most embarrassing thing is when someone in my home comes and sees that and they ask me the question, didn't that come with the manual? And the manual actually even has a quick start guide. But I thought I can be quicker than the quick start guide and try and guess what I have to do? Completely disassemble it and back to square one and then try to rebuild it. Well, it's funny when it's just a piece of furniture and it's a personal story, but it's not funny when it happens to an entire nation who are in the wilderness and God is moving them to a destination has given them a clear blueprint of how to get there and they think they know better. Isn't it? Today we're on the book of numbers and uh a very pivotal chapter again in this book where something very very significant happens. The nation of Israel is once again at crossroads and Moses as he is writing to his recipients when they read this they have only one question in mind. when they look at where Egypt was and when they look at where they are now ready to enter Canaan, the question that comes to our mind is this shouldn't have taken 40 years. Why did this take 40 years? Why did God make us go all over the desert and bring us here after 40 years? And the answer to that question lies right in this chapter. And it's important to understand a little bit of context as Moses is writing this. He wanted them to know while before you, your parents were in this place. This is happening right at the southern tip of Canaan in a town called Kadesh Bernia which is just at the border where if they cross they are in the promised land. It's like, you know, when you go to uh see the Niagara Falls, you cross that bridge on Boston, it's just a security check. You cross it, you're here. So, they're kind of just camping out on the other side and just about to enter when something goes really wrong. And from a timeline, u this is something that's happening just a little over two years from one when they left Egypt. God wanted to take them to Mount Si and uh he wanted to give them the ten commandments. He helped them to build a tabernacle um and and sanctify it so his presence can always go with them. What he was basically doing was re-engineering a new nation. He's re-engineering a group of people who had been so attuned to living a slave life. He wants to re-engineer them and move them from living a life of slavery to a life of freedom in the promised land. So as part of that, it takes him two years to give them the law, to give them the tabernacle. And now he's bringing them and telling them just before you enter this promised land, send out some spies, just one representative from each tribe, 12 of them. let them go scout out the land and come back and then you can you're ready to go. That's the backdrop. And guess what happens as we read in this whole chapter? They blow it. They blow it in a very, very big time. When the end of their journey seemed to be in sight, the Israelites snatched defeat from the jaws of victory through their unbelief. and missing out on something that will affect an entire generation. We've all had our missing out experiences in life, isn't it? Perhaps you have had an experience of missing out on something big because you took a wrong turn or made a costly error in the last minute. Or perhaps some of us are finding ourselves at this point where we are wrestling with a decision that still has to be made and you know the consequences of that will be lasting. Or perhaps some of us are struggling with the ongoing effects of a bad decision or a lifestyle that we lived and many years ago and the fruit of that decision is affecting us or our children and you are fretting about that. Well, if you're in any of these situations, God's word has some encouragement for us today. I've titled this sermon as standing in the gap, covenant grace for covenant breakers. We are going to look at three things from this passage. You know, as these 12 spies or scouts go into the land, they bring up back reports. There are two reports that come out. There is a majority report by 10 of them and there is a minority report by just two of them. And the and this chapter opens by talking about Israel's response to it. So we're going to look first point is Israel's response as covenant breakers. Secondly, we see what's happening here. We're going to talk about Moses's intercession by standing in the gap for the nation of Israel. And third, we are going to look at God's grace for covenant breakers. So, Israel's response as covenant breakers, Moses's intercession by standing in the gap, and thirdly, God's grace for covenant breakers. So, Israel's response as covenant breakers. If you want to really know someone who they really are or if you even want to really know yourself of who you really are, our identity, our real identity only comes out in a crisis or decision-making moments. you know, and especially if you're in the process of dating or getting to know someone before getting married and you want to have the DTR talk, one very helpful thing I've heard from people say is watching that person how they handle conflicts or crisis because then all your guards are down, your real self comes out. Israel is in one such moment and and the real colors what they really believe is actually showing up. They they hear these two contrasting reports and there are two contrasting responses by them. You know the first report we have to read this chapter uh along with the previous chapter. I'll read a brief excerpt um from the previous chapter from verse 31 onwards where the majority report is. It says, "Then the men who had gone up with them said, "We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are." So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, "The land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that divorce its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height." And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Enoch, who came from the Nephilim. And we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers. And so we seemed to them. And the Israelites hear this. And this chapter begins in the first four verses with the terrifying impact it has on the entire nation. There is loud cry and weeping and complaining. But amidst all of this chaos, there is also a minority report that two of the spies bring about. That's Joshua and Caleb. We read that in this chapter from verse 6 onwards. Says, "And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jeffune who were among those who had spied out the land tore their clothes and said to all the congregation of the people of Israel. The land which we passed through to spy it out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us a land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord and do not fear the people of the land for they are bred to us. Their protection is removed from them and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. You look at these two reports, two groups of people, they see the same things. They are honest. They communicate the same facts. They said, "Yes, it's true. It's a great land. Uh it's very fertile. They even big bring a bunch of grapes that two men had to carry on their shoulders. People are powerful. They are big. The cities are fortified. The facts are same. But what they infer from the facts seem to be different for these two groups of people. The larger group, the majority group seems to have been grossly intimidated by what they saw and they developed a syndrome and I like to call that as the grasshopper syndrome. When they went and saw all these things, their identity and perception of themselves became from bad to worse, so selfdepreciating, deprecating, they thought they began to see themselves as grasshoppers that's just waiting to be stamped out by these giants living in the land. But then for the other group of people, Joshua and Caleb, they have the anti-grasshopper syndrome. They'll say, "Well, they are bred to us." Well, grasshoppers um in in those times were the smallest living edible creatures. People actually just ate it. Like you have sushi today. That was the sushi of those days. So when when they saw themselves as grasshoppers, they thought they are food for the enemy. But here Joshua is saying, "No, our enemy are food for us. They are bread. We can eat them for breakfast." That's probably how he would have said it if it was in contemporary terms. So these two reports and these two responses give us a paint a picture for us of two types of how we can live our lives. One I would like to call it as a fear-based living and the other I would like to call it as a faithbased living. And we all tend to fall into these categories. Sometimes go back and forth sometimes just stay in one place. And I want to go a little deeper to unpack for us what is the challenge and problem in a fear-based living. When you live your life constantly in fear, when fear is the guiding motivation for every decision we take in life, there is a deeper perhaps problem within us. First of all, when we make decisions in life from a place of fear, those decisions tend to be irrational. They're not even logical. Think about this. First, they present the facts. They say that this is a land that is flowing with milk and honey. It's very fertile. It's awesome. People are big. Cities are big. And then they throw in the comment which says, "But it divorce everyone who comes into them." How can a land divorce someone and still have big cities and strong people? Logically incoherent, isn't it? And that's what happens when we try to make decisions in fear. They're first of all illogical, irrational. Secondly, what happens is when fear grips us and we give into the fear of some sort, it tends to erase and create a forgetfulness of God's past faithfulness in our lives. The Israelites forgot great things God did in the past. just two years ago destroyed an entire army, split the Red Sea, has been providing for them supernatural food, light, and shelter. Boom, they all disappeared cuz fear became so big they couldn't look back. They couldn't see the greatness of God in their lives and it diminished or nullified all of that for them. Thirdly, fear-based living fails to move us forward because of our lack of faith or more because we tend to trust in ourself. You know, one of the root causes of fear-based living, there are probably two root causes I'd like to leave before us to consider. The first root cause for peer-based living is perhaps we think we can live our life by our own strength and try to keep going on doing things by our own strength or our own smartness or our own wisdom until we hit something that suddenly becomes bigger than our strengths, bigger than our smartness, bigger than our wisdom and we freeze. And fear creeps in because you feel clearly outmatched in this situation. You thought you had this under control. You had the plan. You had perfectly executed the plan. Perhaps in your parenting, you knew exactly what your children wanted. You put them in a bunch of extracurriculars and you keep adding thinking this is going to create a safe, beautiful future for them. Perhaps you do this in your uh professional journey as well. But when some challenge comes is when we first realize we have a problem. The second root cause I think is a deeper and a more significant root cause of such a fear-based living is it's a theological problem. Our fears are not just an emotional problem. Our fears are not just a circumstantial problem. If you think deep enough, our fears come out of a theological issue. And what the theological problem is that it stems from the fact that we tend to give more weight to circumstances or challenges than to God's character. When we fear things more than we fear God, you know what we do? We treat God as small, effectively belittling him. The Israelites were paralyzed by the giants in the land which implied they were saying God is a small thing. These are more than what God can handle. You see that's the root of fear where we tend to give significance and ascribe greatness to things or people or situations more than God and we make God so small in our hearts and in our minds in those situations. When you're afraid you won't have enough money in your next phase of your life or in the future, you are making God small and money bigger than him. When you're so concerned about your looks or how you are received by accepted by others in your social circle, you are making God so small. And this only leads us to failures. Charles Spurgeon has this beautiful quote. He says, "Unbelief will destroy the best of us. Faith will save the worst of us." Unbelief will destroy the best of us. Faith will save the worst of us. Because faith-based living, we're going to see, is more freeing. He trusts that God is bigger and I am smaller and the situations are smaller and the problems are smaller and even our biggest enemies are not a match to our big God. But when we do this there is a response and we see God's response uh by Moses uh in in the next uh verses. First thing that happens is which is going to kindle Moses to go and intercede for them is God's anger. And God tells Moses when he begins to intercede for them. Let me just wipe out these people. Despite everything I have done, they don't seem to love me. They don't seem to respect me. They don't seem to honor me. And above all, now they are actually belittling me literally and making me way smaller than who I really am. And God is a jealous God. And he would be perfectly right if he he says, "Moses, let me just wipe them out and I'll raise a new group of people through you because our God is a just God and a holy God." But Moses continues to stand in this gap that ex created between God who is a covenantal God who promised to these people. I will be your God. You will be my people. He promised to Abraham that he will help his descendants in this land be as the stars of the sky and the sands of the sea. And they are right at that place. And the scouts actually visited the place where Abraham made that covenant. when they go back, God, it kindles his wrath. And so Moses stands in that gap to pray. And he models the great intercessory prayer, a prayer that models for us how we should pray when we are at crossroads in our lives. He says in numbers 14:13, "But Moses said to the Lord, then the Egyptians will hear of it, for you brought up this people in your might from among them, and they will tell the inhabitants of this land." There are two things that characterize Moses's prayer. If you analyze it on what basis Moses prays and how should we and I pray when we are in those crossroads moments he intercedes for the people pleading on God's glory and God's mercy he refers to God's name and God's actions says God I want to pray and intercede for those people not for those people's sake, but for your name's sake. You told them you the whole world was watching when you brought them out of Egypt. They saw the great things you did, the power you manifested. So, please don't destroy them because that will malign your name, that will not glorify you. And then he goes and talks about God's attributes, his name, and and what he has done. He says in verse 7, "And now please let the power of the Lord be as great as you have promised, saying, 'The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation. Please pardon the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt until now. Now he's pleading with God based on who God has described himself to be. This is the attributes that God described who he was to Moses in Mount Si. We read that in Exodus 32 that he's a God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The same word we used in our opening psalm today. The Hebrew word kisses. It's it's a it's a covenantal love. It's a love that's based and tied on a covenant when God says, "I will love you no matter what." And when you pray prayers like that where you are focusing on God being glorified on God's name being exalted there is a great assurance such prayers will be answered and it may even make our prayers very different. Rather than praying God give me this job or or this opportunity or this person or this future. What if God wants to put you in a place which is not a happy place for you? What if God wants to actually allow some sickness in your life which will make you pause and think deeply about life and make some lifealtering decisions? What if God sustains some pain and suffering in your life so that you will draw nearer to him or perhaps be more gracious and understanding to other which will be more glorious? For him to instantly fix our pain and suffering or instantly gratify our desires by giving us what we want or by instantly doing amazing miracles. He even if he does that what if that doesn't glorify him in or through our lives and so maybe that's why some of our prayers are not getting answered but this prayer will he's not telling God to summarily bless them he's telling God by doing this nations will glorify you by doing this your covenantal love will draw these people to yourself you know the word slow to anger. I think I don't know why they it's perhaps very difficult to translate in English. The Hebrew word actually is a word that is used to describe someone who has a long nose. You know in some cultures people say people have a long nose or angry people. I don't know whether it's it was the same in in Mediterranean culture as well. They ascribed some specific body parts uh to people who had a long nose. But here he was saying this is the exact opposite that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And that is a powerful prayer that God responds and we see his response in the third point. He displays covenantal grace for covenant breakers. Whereas he begins by saying, "I'm going to instantly kill everybody, destroy them." He does not do that. He lets them live. He lets them live. But he also is gracious. He gives them exactly what they want and what they asked. What did they ask? In the very first verses we read that he said they ask and tell Moses in from the second part of second verse the whole congregation said to him verse two would that we had died in the land of Egypt or would that we have died in the wilderness why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword. Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? And they said to one another, "Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt." God says, "You get what you asked for. Is that what you want? Then so be it. Let me have let you have that." So he tells them, "I'm going to be gracious. I'm not going to kill you. But if that's what you're complaining and demonstrating your lack of faith, I'm going to let you run with that a little bit. So he commands them in the end of this chapter if you read to turn back and go to the Red Sea, which is where they came, you know. So, so if you want to trace their um route they followed, it's like a Wii or inverted triangle. Now they come from um Egypt to Mount Zion. They go up to enter Canaan, which is right here. Now, God tells them, "Go back to the Red Sea, which is the path they came to go to Egypt." So, I'm going to give you exactly what you asked for. Go back to Egypt. That's the first thing he tells them. So, we have to sometimes be careful what we ask for and how we pray to God because God is not our servant. His job in the world is primarily not to make you happy, to live a happily ever after life. So he says, for each day your scouts spent, you're going to spend a year in the desert till you all die a natural death. That is what took 40 years. children. Moses wants them to remember. You ask me why did it take 40 years to come here? It's because of your parents' lack of faith and trust in me. And so in Hebrews 3, there is a stark warning. It says, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden is your hearts." We'll come to that in a minute. And then he says, "But your wife and your children whom you said and you thought are going to be enslaved in the promised land." No, I'm going to reverse that, they alone will enter the promised land. You know, though it's God's covenantal promise was that anyone who does not believe his anger extends to the third and fourth generation here within the second generation they experience grace. They are able they are the ones who are able to enter the promised land along with Joshua and Caleb says everyone aged 20 and below now will enter the promised land and until then I will keep you alive. I'll feed you mana. I'll be a light at night and provide shade during the day. That is how I'm going to show that I'm a slow to anger God and abounding in love God. He blesses their children. You know the reason was his plan was not just to take the nation of Israel to Canaan so they can live amazing lives in this land flowing with milk and honey. He had a bigger redemptive plan. He was going to have his son Jesus Christ born in one of those cities to enter this world to literally save the world. Someone who is the real Joshua, a bigger, better Moses. That's part of God's plan. They don't know that yet. They think I we tend to think our entire existence God has to always keep us happy, never allow trials, pain, suffering, sickness. But we don't know that God's plans are always bigger. His plans are better and they are beautiful. Not just for you and me, but for this whole world. So he will not stop even when his children rebel. Their faithlessness is not going to stop God from moving forward. Their foolishness will not thwart God's plans and purposes. Like the nation of Israel, you and I are an in between period too, isn't it? between Christ's first coming and his death and resurrection through which he purchased your freedom and my freedom and set us free to when he wants to lead us to our eternal rest when he comes back again. Until that time, he wants you and I to live our lives to fulfill his plans and purposes of building his kingdom and doing his will and to live with that faith. But we tend to keep going back again and again to our life of slavery to fear because we try by our strength all the time. We look at challenges and give in to them. You know living in Silicon Valley this really is literally a land flowing with milk and honey isn't it? If you're living living here, it is one of the most beautiful richest places in the world. Surrounded by giant corporations and billionaires and the world's top one person rich people, most of whom work against God. Surrounded by people who don't believe in God. And on top of that, as immigrants, you really don't know if you belong. what's going to happen to your visa situation and what will happen next. They can all stoke so much fears in our lives. Israelites saw these established cities and archaeologists recently discovered some of them. They found that they had fortified walls which were 50 feet high and 15 ft thick. that terrified them. When fears of recession or job loss or sickness comes, we get terrified too because we think somehow we have to fix all these by oursel and our God is smaller than all of these things because we think we are in control of our life and we have to be our providers of our life. You know, as I've shared my story before, while living in Germany when I had Hodkins and um was not sure of how long I was going to live and as we were praying um the first thought that came to my mind when I prayed and I felt the question God was putting uh in me was what's your problem? My quest my response was God who is going to take care of my wife and my two and a half yearear-old daughter if I die. That was my really real question and I had to keep saying that two days. It took three days for me to understand what am I really asking God? Am I the one who is caring for my family really? I was depressed for three days thinking about that and my real freedom came when God spoke to me through Psalm 23 and I was able to say oops I'm sorry God I am not taking care of my wife and my daughter you are the one who sustained me who sustains them and you will God and he has we have moved continents changed jobs. God has been unchanging and faithful and he's not done with me yet. And I know as long as I live a life pleasing to him and seek to satisfy him is we never desired to be in this place or to buy a home or or all the other blessings that come with us. But if God has a purpose, he will accomplish. He will provide everything he wants for us. If God wants to use you in your workplace to create a disruptive technology that benefits humanity, he will give you that job or he will keep you in that job. He may even create a challenge to move you out of your job or get fired only to take you to a better place. Haven't we heard testimonies of that time and time again? So what do we fear when we have that faith that our God is bigger than our problems? because he's doing something bigger and deeper, it will only free us. But if we are worried about our children and hold them close and hold them tight and think that only we have to make them amazing and end up putting them in so many different things because someone told you that that's the pathway to success in life and better college prospects and then they experience a challenge. or when your dream doesn't happen and maybe you're still trying to parent with your own strength and holding on to your children, having your identity wrapped around them. But God will intervene in some way to free you from that because guess what? Your children are his children. He loves them more than you love them too. You know, it is so sad at the end of this chapter, we didn't read that. If you read the next part, what happens even after all this to the nation of Israelites? They're so stubborn. Sometimes we wonder how much should some person get hit before they get it. By now you would think this is enough for the Israelites. They should wake up, right? It can't get worse than this. You're almost about to get destroyed. God says he's going to preserve. Guess what they do. The next few verses you will read, God tells them to go back to the Red Sea. They decide, "No, we are going to go and take Canaan down by our own strength." So they march into Canaan all the way up to the north till they face tremendous dis defeat. Despite Moses telling them, "Do not go. God's not coming with you. Don't do this by your own strength." They can't listen. They still go and get defeated really bad and come running all the way back. Sometimes we are so stubborn we do the same too. God keeps whispering. He keeps talking loudly. He sends this. He sends that. You're like, "No, I'm still going to fight." And you fight God till you face brutal, brutal defeat. Please stop. If you're trying to live your life by your own strength, you can't. And this simple phrase, let go and let God, can't be more true than this. And we read the sad reality that God let them all die in the wilderness because of their stubborn unbelief. Moses interceded for them. He could save 200 or 300,000 of them from dying for a few years. He was able to defer God's wrath to be poured upon them and being dis destroying them through his intercession. But we have a better mediator than Moses, isn't it? Jesus Christ who is the mediator of the new covenant for us. Instead of letting us die, not just a few hundred or few thousand, millions and millions of people against whom God would have been perfectly just to pour his wrath whenever we act in defiance and unbelief. He took all of God's wrath upon himself on the cross so we can live by believing him, by surrendering to him. And through his resurrection, he now gives new life for us and a new ability for us to not continue to live in stubbornness or trust in ourselves, but to live in sweet union and fellowship with him. And he unleashes his power through his Holy Spirit to make something new out of us every day in our life. So that we can now through the new life he gives for us, we can live for him, by him, and through him. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that amazing? The gracious gift of God. But if you're still stubborn and want to go away from him, he will honor that and let you go. But why would you look back and see what he has done? not only in your personal life but in history but above all on the cross through his son Jesus. Let's not be like the Israelites rebellious. Let's not try to learn our life with our strength and get weak. Let's stop and surrender and embrace him. Joshua and Cal Caleb were the minority. They had the minority report, but they got it right. They displayed what a faith-based living looks like, seeing God, trusting his promises, and God used them mightily to lead his people into the promised land. Majority is not always right or even mostly right. You know, Martin Luther during the reformation times at the diet of worms when he was called to question to take a stand on God's word against the majority and the authority of the religious institutions of the day. He said this great statement and remember this especially for our children. Sometimes you tend to give into pure pressure because you want to fit in and and and the bigger group seems great. But this is what Martin Luther said. He said, "One man with God is the majority." Can we say that again? One man with God is a majority. That's the God we serve. And God wants us to live such countercultural lives by going to him. So my dear friends, as we close this morning, let me remind you that you and I, we have this tendency to keep running away from him to be covenant breakers. But remember, we have a great intercessor who is not only interceding for us, but who was the one who also absorbed God's wrath on him so we can experience grace and he now comes and lives in us and gives us grace to live this new life. So take some time today to reflect on any regrets you have on any areas where you have made God small and your problems big and come to the foot of the cross as we participate in the communion and seek his forgiveness. Maybe you are in a good place right now but you have a friend or someone in your family who is going through this very very difficult time. They're not able to understand and you can clearly see from outside they're making irrational decisions. Things doesn't seem to make sense for them rationally and they are trying to fix the harder things go. They're trying to do things more harder. Even if you tell they don't get it, you know the best thing you can do for them, don't try to argue with them. Don't try to fix their problems. Will you be that intercessor for them and pray for them? Because prayer does great things that it can really move their hearts and help them to see the covenantal grace and love of God and come and embrace that. or if you're wrestling with some decisions you made in the past out of fear and if it's affecting you today and it's hurting you today, it's never too late to come to the cross and seek his forgiveness and be reminded that our God is greater than the greatest problems and evil in this world. And our God, whatever he does, he does it for the greatest good for you and me and all his children and this world. Shall we pray?