1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The
message from God’s Word is taken from Numbers 14:17-24 (READ TEXT). It’s entitled, “Too Good to be True?” Dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Do you know someone who is still
trying to keep New Years’ resolutions? Has anyone been staying at them since
last month? People make such resolutions because they want to improve their
lives. They want something good, something better than they have. They want to
lose weight or have more money in the bank. So, they resolve to go on a diet or
save more money. But after a while it occurs to them that these resolutions
carry their own kinds of costs. Losing weight means eating less pie, and saving
money means buying fewer toys and trinkets. Even though a resolution may have
been for the good, it often goes by the wayside.
3.
Occasionally you encounter a person
who combines a number of major resolutions and tries to keep them all at the
same time. Others smile and wink, for they know that the costs will mount up
for this person faster than for others. He is more likely to abandon his
resolutions, maybe all of them. You might say that the improvements he was
seeking were simply too good to be true.
4.
In the text, God was about to give
his people something good: the land he had promised them when he brought them
out of Egypt. It was going to be a gift. Moses had sent out spies to look it
over, one from each tribe of Israel. The twelve of them came back and reported
that the land of Canaan was indeed good, better in fact than they either
expected or imagined. But ten of the spies added that this land was
well-defended by big, strong people. It was a good land, all right, but to
think it could be theirs was too good to
be true. The remaining spies, Joshua and Caleb, insisted that with God’s
help Israel could overcome the defenders and take the land.
5.
Most of the Israelites listened to
the report of the majority. Their basic sin was unbelief. They didn’t believe
that the Lord would keep his promise. It just seemed too good to be true, they reasoned. Hand in hand with their unbelief
went selfishness. They figured they had to take care of themselves, so they
started planning to forsake Moses, choose a new leader, and return to Egypt.
6.
Then the Lord said NO! They were not
going back to Egypt, but except for Joshua and Caleb no one over the age of
twenty was going to enter the Promised Land, either. The Lord announced that
Israel was to wander in the wilderness for forty years, during which time all
the adults who rebelled against him—everyone of that age except the faithful
spies Joshua and Caleb—would die off. Unbelief robbed them of the blessing of
the Promised Land. When some of them tried the next day to go to the Promised
Land after all, they found out how serious the Lord had been when he said no to
them. They had thought it was too good to
be true that they could live in the Promised Land. So they did not. Through
their unbelief, they lost it.
7.
The Israelites had no excuse,
especially after everything the Lord had done for them. He had done one thing
after another that they would have thought too
good to be true. It would certainly not do for the people to claim that
they were only following the majority. Then, as now, the majority can be wrong. The Lord was talking about disinheriting
Israel and starting over to make a nation from Moses. Then Moses interceded for
the people, as he had done in the past. He first told the Lord that it would
give him a black eye before the other nations to have taken Israel out of Egypt
only to kill them all suddenly in the wilderness. It would look like he could
not give this people the land he had promised. God would get a bad name, not at
all the name by which he wanted to be known.
8.
How did Moses know so much about the
Lord’s name? The Lord had proclaimed it to him. Earlier, when Israel was camped
at Mount Sinai and Moses was on the mountain receiving the Law from God, the
people rebelled and made a golden calf to worship. After that incident, too,
Moses interceded for the people. Then the Lord himself gave Moses what has been
called the “Sermon on God’s Name.”
Now, when the people rebelled after the mission of the spies, Moses was doing
nothing other than repeating these words back to the Lord. This was the second
and stronger point in Moses’ intercession. To this day, the strongest thing we
can do in prayer remains repeating God’s promises back to him.
9.
The Lord had said, so Moses repeated
back: “The LORD is slow to anger and
abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression” (Numbers
14:18). The Lord forgives by bearing iniquity and transgression. Despite God’s
anger at the recent rebellion, and even though he ordered forty years of
wandering in the wilderness because of it, the Lord forgave his people. He
forgave even those who died out in the wilderness.
10.
So “if you would hold to God and call Him by His right name . . . it is
recorded here that He is a Forgiver of sin, that He is gracious and merciful.”1
For the Israelites, forgiveness could hardly have been due to anything within
them. They had rebelled horribly. Rather, as this text makes clear, their
forgiveness was rooted in the character of God.
Here you and I can encounter a problem. The Lord has not promised to
lead us onto a piece of real estate in Palestine. But he has promised to forgive
our sins, and where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and
salvation. Whether we think our rebellions against him are as bad as those of
Israel in the text or even worse, he promises to forgive them. That’s his
character. The question arises, though: is
this too good to be true? Our problem resembles Israel’s trouble believing
that the Lord would take them into the Promised Land safe and sound, except
that God’s character is not nearly as tangible as the Promised Land was. Can we
count on God’s character? Or do we take it upon ourselves to try and take care
of ourselves? Watch out for losing God’s blessing through unbelief!
11.
God goes on the attack against our
unbelief. He attacks it, for example, in the “Sermon on God’s Name”: “The
LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” He bears iniquity
and transgression. “Bearing iniquity” means
that someone will take upon himself the penalty of God’s punishment. In this
passage, the Lord vowed to do exactly that. Yes, this was indeed a matter of
God’s character, his loving character that issued in loving action. He loved
the world “so,” which means “in just this way”: that he gave his only
Son. God’s love translated into giving. He gave his very best. His only Son
became Man for us men and for our salvation. John the Baptizer announced him as
the Lamb of God who carries away the sin of the world (John 1:29). When he was
placed on the cross, he nailed our sins there (see Colossians 2:14). And he
left those sins there when he rose from the dead.
12.
In his Word, God powerfully holds
our Lord Jesus Christ before us. He does this in the Old Testament as well as
the New. Think of the second goat on the Day of Atonement. All the sins of the
community were laid on this scapegoat before it was taken out into the
wilderness and lost there. Through the power of the Good News, we believe that
our sins really have been sent away in Christ. This is good, of course, but not too good to be true.
13.
A number of Old Testament passages
echo the “Sermon on God’s Name” from
Exodus and Numbers. For example, Psalm 103 says: [The
Lord] made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to
anger and abounding in steadfast love. He
will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our
sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his
steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so
far he removes our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:7–12).
14.
In this passage and others, the Lord
takes the offensive against our unbelief. The advice of Luther is apropos: Whenever
we are stung and vexed in our conscience because of sins, let us simply turn
our attention from sin and wrap ourselves in the bosom of the God who is called
Grace and Mercy, not doubting at all that He wants to show grace and mercy to
miserable and afflicted sinners, just as He wants to show wrath and judgment to
hardened sinners. This is true theology . . . we might add, even though it
may seem too good to be true. Don’t
listen to the voices of the majority. Listen to the risen Lord who gave himself
for you.
15.
Israel wandered for forty years
before finally reaching the Promised Land under Joshua, the successor to Moses.
But reaching this land did not constitute the final rest God has in mind for
his people. The Book of Hebrews insists that “if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day
later on. So then,” it assures us, “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people
of God” (Hebrews 4:8–9). The Lord promises to bring us to that rest, where
we will have the full enjoyment of our forgiveness: They
shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor
any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the
midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs
of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes
(Revelation 7:16–17).
16.
Is all of this too good to be true? The
world says it is. The majority tells us that this hope is a drag. It is costing
us right here and now. The claim is that this hope costs us too much in
enjoyment, self-importance, or freedom. So, the majority says, we might as well
give up on it—not unlike a New Year’s resolution. The majority is wrong. Incidents like the
rebellion in our text give a stern warning to our old Adam, and more than a
warning. Through his Law, God kills. Yet he kills in order to make alive. Good
News like the “Sermon on God’s Name”
provides encouragement to the new man created in us through Baptism. It gives more
than encouragement, however. Beyond describing God as forgiving, it brings us
his forgiveness. Because of Christ, he forgives you right now. God’s Good News
also creates faith in which we believe that the Lord has pardoned our
iniquities, even ours. On account of Christ, none of God’s promises are too
good to be true. Jesus is the “Yes”
to all of them. In him, God says “Yes”
to you. Amen. Now the
peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus until life everlasting.
Amen.
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