Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Cowardice of the People

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Cowardice of the People

Genre:

Track: 25

Dictation Name: RR181N25

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come again into thy presence. We come from the noise and turmoil of this world into thy house. Teach us to be still, to know thee and to wait on thee. To know that thou art God. It is not men who shall prevail but thy will that shall be done. We cast our every care, therefore, upon thee who carest for us. We bring unto thee all our hopes, all our fears, all our griefs, trusting in thy sufficiency. Bless us now by thy word and by thy spirit, and strengthen us and grant us thy peace. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Numbers 14:1-25, and our subject: The Cowardice of the People. Numbers 14:1-25. “And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness! And wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes: and they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not. But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they. And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;) and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou Lord art among this people, that thou Lord art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness. And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.

And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word: but as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it: but my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it. (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwelt in the valley.) Tomorrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness by the way of the Red sea.”

I thought it was of interest that someone who is listening to the tapes of these sent me something which I think is quite telling. No Christian escapes a taste of the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. I think very well put.

Well, Numbers 14:1-25 is a devastating account of the chosen people mentality, whether in Israel or in the church. God’s election or choice of any people or any group is an act of sovereign grace on His part. To presume on that fact means judgment, it invites it. Ungrateful people constantly remake the past in terms of their own imagination. Israel here says, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt!” but in Egypt, they had been slaves. Their newly born male sons had, for a time, been routinely killed in order to eliminate them as a people, leaving only girls to be made harem slaves. This policy was finally dropped for unstated reasons. Probably because the need for labor levies for massive construction work emphasized the need for more male workers.

Again, some said, “Would God that we had died in the wilderness!” They would rather be dead than alive to face and conquer an enemy. As Matthew Henry observed, they charged God with malice and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy in bringing them to the borders and apparently formidable enemy. Their solution was a simple one. “Let us make a captain and return into Egypt,” slavery was better than freedom. Israel was hostile to the responsibilities of freedom. They were at least open about their preference for slavery.

In 1964, we were then living in Palo Alto, California, and wealth and economic security were commonplace, but I was surprised by the number of people of means who voted for Lyndon Johnson for president, rather than Barry Goldwater for one reason. Because they believed Goldwater would imperil their future social security checks. Some of these people were notable churchmen, and that was their one reason. In verse 5, we are told that Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the congregation. Speech had been exhausted by them, so their recourse was now prayer. Some people, especially Muslims, still pray in this manner. At that time, it was a means of praying in desperation. The normal people’s attitude in the Bible when there were no grievous problems, was standing. Throughout scripture, we’d see that. This prostration meant grief and despair. The response of the two faithful spies was that they rent their clothes. This was a very well-known public expression of dissent on hearing blaspheme. In Jeremiah 36:24, we are told that God indicts the leaders of Judah for consenting to the destruction of Jeremiah’s prophesy by King Jehoiakim. The king, as he heard it read, took it, cut it up with his pen knife, and tossed it into the fire. We are told, “Yet they were not afraid nor rent their garments, neither the king nor any of his servants that heard all these words.” This was a very common means of expressing dissent and grief in Antiquity, because very often, if you opened your mouth, it was death on the spot. So, this was a means of silently expressing total dissent.

Moses and Aaron had exhausted themselves in pleading with the people. The people would not listen to God’s word through Moses. As Nerdsee{?} commented, “What Israel does not is to show contempt. They do not consider it worth the trouble to look to him or listen to him. It is a not believing in him, a failure to see him as the reliable one on whom man can always depend under all circumstances. But in doing this, Israel has lost its right to exist. What Israel is, it owes to the Lord, and if it severs every tie with him, it turns toward its own ruin.”

At this point, the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel to pass a death sentence on them. Prior to this, Caleb and Joshua had tried to reason with the people. Their argument was, first Canaan was an extremely rich and fertile land, a land flowing with milk and honey. We have covered it carefully and we know how good it is, they reported. Second, as for the Canaanite peoples and city states, however seemingly impressive, Caleb said, “They are bread for us: their defence is departed from them.” Their defense is departed is literally “their shade,” their protection is gone. These people had been under Egyptian rule. Without that military protection, they were now unprepared for an attack. They are bread for us, that is, “We will eat them up,” therefore, “fear them not.” This was an astute and accurate analysis.

Third, the critical fact for us is God’s blessing, they said. He is the determining power. If you rebel against Him, He will be your real enemy. The reaction of the people was to plan at once to stone to death Caleb and Joshua. Suddenly, however, the glory of the Lord, His fiery presence appeared in and about the sanctuary. God speaks, however, to Moses alone. The people had provoked Him with their faithlessness in the face of all God’s miracles. “I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee (Moses) a greater nation and mightier than they.” To an extent, God did smite Israel. All those twenty years old and older died in the wilderness. He summoned great men out of the Hebrew ranks in the centuries ahead, but the nation as a whole gained judgment again and again.

Moses, at this point, interceded with God. His argument was based entirely on the character of God, not on anything in Israel. First, God’s honor required the continuation of Israel, lest the Egyptians and Canaanites dismiss God’s miraculous works as a fluke. For God not to take Israel into Canaan after all that Moses had declared in Egypt would be difficult for Moses to explain.

Now, one of the beliefs in those days, because the religions were naturalistic, was that there were powerful forces in nature. You could harness these forces through various means, and that’s what both magic and science were about, but those forces were all limited in power, and they would say, “Well, this God of the Hebrews was a limited natural force which gave out after a time.” Then second, Moses reminded God of his own self-revelation as both miraculous and just, and Moses by no means, understates God’s justifiable wrath.

In verses 18 and 19 we read, “The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.” Moses agrees with God’s indictment, but he asks for mercy towards Israel for the Lord’s sake, not Israel’s. God’s forgiveness is a limited one. All over twenty will die in the wilderness for their lack of faith. Only Caleb and Joshua would enter Canaan. As one scholar has rendered the latter part of verse 23, “No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.” They had distrusted God and they would pay the penalty for it. By planning to elect a new leader and to return to Egypt, they were completely rejecting the whole plan of salvation, as Wenem{?} so tellingly states it, “To believe in God means to accept all He says and to act accordingly, to trust his promises and obey His commands. Faith makes a man to be counted for righteousness before God. Its absence damns him. In this instance, God proposes destroying Israel and starting afresh with Moses and his descendants.” God could easily have done this. Nothing is impossible with God. Moses and his desire for God’s glory pleaded for mercy towards Israel. In a very real sense, God did set Israel aside. When we examine the Davidic ancestry and that of Jesus, we find foreign women therein, including a prostitute; Rahab. The ancestry of our Lord manifests God’s grace, not Israel’s chosen privileges. The hatred of God for sin is very real, and it must be an unforgotten fact.

John Henry Newman’s sermon on verse 11 says, among other things, “Hard as it is to believe, miracles certainly to not make men better. The history of Israel proves it. Why should the sight of a miracle make us better than we are. It may be said that a miracle would startle us, but would not the startling pass away? Could we be startled forever? It may be urged that perhaps startling might issue an amendment of life, but why is a miracle necessary to produce such effects? Other things startle us besides miracles. What is the real reason why we do not seek God with all our hearts if the absence of miracles be not the reason as assuredly it is not. There is one reason common both to both us and the Jews, heartlessness in religious matters, an evil heart of unbelief. Both they and we disobey and disbelieve because we do not love. In another respect, we are really far more favored than the Israelites. They had outward miracles. We have miracles that are not outward, but inward.” What Israel wanted was not God, but miracles guaranteeing security. Slavery under Pharaoh meant security, and it seemed preferable to freedom under God, because freedom means uncertainties and responsibilities.

This is why politics has replaced Christianity as the central concern of many peoples. Politics succeeds by the promise of security, which is another way of saying slavery. The slave may or may not have a good life, but the slave has cradle-to-grace security. Slave revolts are simply destructive because the slave’s vision rarely extends beyond security. This is why, when politics becomes primary in the life of the people, the people are headed for slavery.

This is the second time God had spoken of destroying Israel. We see this first in Exodus 14:12. It is referred to in Psalm 106:23. In Jeremiah 15:1, we are told, “Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth.” The Babylonian captivity followed. A key aspect of evil men is their intense self-pity. That’s what the whole game of victimization is about and laws are constantly being passed to make victims of one group after another. The disabled are now being counted as victims. Florida has a new law making all prostitutes victims, and they can sue their pimp now for victimization, or any person who was first responsible for their seduction. Victimization is the end result of the political game and enslavement. Evil men have an intense self-pity.

In verse 3, Israel complains that God has led them to the border of Canaan to fall by the sword, “that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?” Now this is an amazing statement. The Egyptians were very prone to seizing attractive girls, boys, and women from subject peoples. It was a common act in that era and they knew it, yet now Israel accuses God of planning to do the same to them. Self-pity had turned to viciousness, as it always does. Fear had made them fools. There is a grim irony in verse 4. “Let us make a captain and let us return into Egypt.” As D.E. Young observed years ago, “They could call a man a captain, but that would not make him one.” You can elect a man a president, but that does not make him a fit leader.

According to the heresy of democracy, leaders are made by the vote of the people, rather than by faith of character. The result for the twentieth century have not been good. According to verse 25, God declares, “Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwelt in the valley.) Tomorrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness by the way of the Red sea.” Because Israel was now barred by God’s sovereign decree from entering Canaan for a generation, they were ordered back into the wilderness. They were to avoid the valley ahead, because God would not longer bless them with victory, but this was a command they again chose to disregard. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee for this thy word. Indeed, oh Lord, like Israel of old, we have chosen slavery as a nation and as a world. We beseech thee, as Moses did of old, deliver us from our own stupidity and evil, make us again a godly nation wherein dwelleth righteousness, and give us a spirit of faithfulness. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Is it possible that Moses talked God into a differing opinion?

[Rushdoony] No, it was all a part of God’s predestined plan, and He was going to show to these people what their sin led to, and He was going to show that it was all of His grace, in the history of Israel, and I believe this is what he is going to demonstrate to the church today, because the church is in the same position. We have, in the forthcoming Chalcedon Report, the first of a two-part series by Joseph McCullough on designer churches. Now, this may sound like a caricature, but there are groups today which go in and, for any denomination, any kind of church, will plan a designer church. How to meet the needs of the people. How to give priority to the people and their needs, so that God is left out of the picture, and so today, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, designer churches are increasingly the direction we see churches taking, and that spells judgment. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] {?} social security, the Supreme Court has ruled that the benefit {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the supreme court has made clear that social security is not an insurance policy but a tax, and therefore, at any time, they can revoke the benefits or, as they have from the beginning, take the funds and use them as they see fit, and tax us to pay off anyone they are going to pay social security to. So, it’s a tax.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I believe he indicated that. How much he meant it I don’t know, because before he was elected, Richard Nixon came out with a gold standard and closed the gold window when he was president. Yes?

[Audience] I was just thinking about the social security, about two trillion dollars in {?} liabilities in the social security system, and currently of those over sixty-five, their assets represent about seven trillion, out of which two trillion will be turned over to the U.S. government in the form of estate taxes, and inheritance taxes, so ironically, the very people who will be receiving the benefits will be giving them back to the government after they die.

[Rushdoony] Yes. It’s a fraud like everything that the great god Caesar promises us. Those figures are very telling, Hugh. Very telling. Any other comments or questions? Well, we are in the age of statism, and it is dying, so God’s judgment is on the whole world today because of its statism. So, we need to rejoice in that fact, because there is no deliverance without judgment. Let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father, thy word is truth, and thy judgments are true and righteous altogether. Give us grace to stand in the day of judgment and to know therein lies our deliverance, that the wheat and the chaff must be separated, the tares plucked up, and that thy purposes in all these things are for our good and for the glory of thy kingdom. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape