Date: June 25, 2006
Passage: Numbers 11:1-23
Message: The Necessity of Acquiring a Hunger for God
Series: Surviving the Wilderness [3]
….now the people complained about their hardships v1
Sounds familiar!
What sorts of things do you complain about most?
What lies beneath a complaining spirit?
Read v4-9
One of the symptoms of a critical heart is unrelenting selfishness.
Selfishness warps our judgement and our memory.
Turns us into a rabble…
….we remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost
No cost! What had they forgotten about Egypt?
Why do we so quickly forget what God has saved us from?
[See Ephesians 2:1-10]
God brought them into the Wilderness, not to SUPPRESS their appetites, but to ENLARGE their desires!
God wanted them to acquire a hunger for Him!! [See Deuteronomy 8:3]
Discuss
4 things a leader should forget
1. Forget about trying to please everybody v10-15
What is happening in Moses right now?
Why does Moses feel it so personally?
2. Forget about doing it on your own Read v16
Will you notice that God does not do a miracle here, he calls out some men!
Do you know that God is more interested in perfecting people than performing miracles!
The solution to our problems is not always an act of God; it is more often the movement of God in our lives that shows us what we can do!!
Discuss
3. Forget about settling your own scores Read v17-20, v33-34
The real issue for the leader is not that he is beyond criticism, but in being able to determine what is unhelpful, uninformed and ungracious from what is genuine, considered and shared with good heart.
Why has the Church got such a reputation for hurting each other?
How much of our problem comes from the mentality that says,
‘We’re all one in Christ and therefore we are all able to give our opinion about everythingâ€
What is a more balance attitude?
4. Forget about what’s impossible! Read v21-23
God has to remind Moses
Is my arm too short?
Write that down somewhere!
Burn it on your heart!
Save it to your memory!
When do you need reminding of this?
God’s arm stretched all the way to the Cross.
John Stott wrote-
"We are not to see God on a deck chair, but on a cross. The God who allows us to suffer, once suffered Himself in Christ, and continues to suffer with us and for us today. He cries when we cry.
"I myself could never believe in God were it not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world.
But each time, after a while I have had to turn away. And in my imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted,
tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wretched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness.
That is the God for me! He laid aside His immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Somehow, our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His.
Discuss