In this sermon, the speaker describes the promised land as a fertile and abundant land, flowing with milk and honey. He emphasizes that God's purpose is to make us like Jesus Christ and conform us to his image. The speaker warns that if we resist God's work in our lives, he will bring circumstances that will force us to submit to his will. The sermon also highlights the importance of remembering God's past miracles and provisions, as the Israelites forgot these when they faced the challenges of entering the promised land.

You turn please to Numbers chapter 13 and 14. Now we're going to consider this portion of scripture that's been read to us. You will understand the background is God's desire to bless his people. God has great purpose to bless all of us, but the problem is to get us blessable. There's much more for you than you've ever received. There's much more for me than I've ever received. We've never exhausted the good things that God has planned for us. And the reason that we aren't more richly endowed with the privileges and blessings that he's given is because he couldn't do it. His great problem with Israel was to get them blessable. He didn't have any problem getting them out of Egypt, his problem was to get Egypt out of them. And his problem isn't to get you out of hell, but it's to get that which made you a candidate for the pit out of your heart. And he discovered as we read this portion that there were times when they rebelled against the Lord. And if I understand my life with any degree of insight and yours with something I might have gained from my own, this has been true of you as well, and true of me, that we've, well, rebelled against the Lord, against his dealings and against his working. We were all glad at a time to be out of the shackles and away from the stinging, biting whip, but to allow the Lord to complete his work and do all that he wants to do, this has been a little more difficult. The land of Canaan isn't heaven. If you've been thinking that, I wish you'd change your mind. Hymns often teach us a great many wonderful truths, but they also can confuse the issue. And there has been a sense in which the church has been impoverished by being taught that Beulah land and the land of Canaan is heaven, and it isn't. The land of Canaan speaks of a life of union. The Red Sea speaks of deliverance from the penalty of sin and from the sentence of death. And Jordan River speaks of death to self and the fulfillment of God's purpose leading us into union with him. If you would like to see it as something pertaining with heaven, it's not heaven, but it's the heavenly. And in Ephesians 1 he tells us that he's blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies. Now this doesn't mean that we're to wait until we get to heaven to have these spiritual blessings, but that we're to realize that this is a phase of relationship that is ours by virtue of our having been willing to go through Jordan, speaking of death to self, and coming up into the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Christ on the other side of the river. Now here were some people that wanted the grapes of Ishkol, but they didn't want to deal with the problems that were in the way. And they were unwilling and unprepared to meet God on his terms, and so there had to be a considerable loss sustained by them. I would like to say right now that the purpose in this series of messages is to emphasize to you again, and to me as well, that everything that God does, he does for the broken in heart and the contrite in spirit. He has said that the broken heart and the contrite spirit he will not despise, but by inference he despises every other kind of heart and every other kind of spirit. And the only kind that he can bless is the broken heart. The only spirit he can bless is the contrite spirit. My name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him that is of a broken and a contrite spirit. And the greatest difficulty that a person faces is brokenness. You and I are made on the same loom. The woof may have been a little different, but the warp is the same. And I am well enough acquainted with your heart as to realize that you are going to resist everything, and so will I, that will bring us to the place of being blessed. God just has to do major engineering for most of us to get us into circumstances from which we can't escape in order to bring us to the place where he wanted us to be so that he could bless us. And if some of you are beginning to say, oh he or she or this or that, these circumstances and this conditions, and you know what you'd like to do really is to change the circumstances and alter the condition, but do you know the effect? If God hasn't done in your heart and mind through the circumstances and the conditions what he wants to do, and we escape from them by some engineering of ours, all we have done is force the Lord to either disown us and let us go, or else to erect another set of circumstances from which we can't escape. Do you see? It's as though the cow, the young heifer, isn't prepared to follow the lead in so that it takes three people, one behind, one on each side, and if three won't do it, we get six. It's got to be moved, just has to be moved. And so it is with our stubborn hearts, if we're not prepared to let God affect what he wants to through this, then he'll just bring that into play, as the machinist would try to shape the steel, and so he takes a fine stone and puts it on the wheel and begins to turn, and he holds the steel against it, but the steel tends to bounce, and it won't cut and it won't submit to the wheel and the abrasion, because it apparently is just such a character, a nature, that this wheel won't work. Well, I suppose if it were too soft and useless and didn't have any value at all, the machinist would throw it away, but my experience in the past has been that the machinist simply puts a wrench on the spindle, takes the wheel off, and puts a coarser-grained one on. Then he holds the steel against it, and when it wouldn't submit to the fine carborundum, it would. And so I suggest to you that you recognize that God loves us too much to let us get by with anything, and his purpose is to make us like Jesus Christ and conform us to the image of his Son, and if we won't bend on this wheel of circumstances, then he has that wheel that he'll take out of the case, mount on the spindle, and against which we will be brought. Now, there is this that you should see to encourage your heart as we go into the Scripture, which might be, unless you're prepared to meet God on his terms, somewhat discouraging. You'll understand that Moses was instructed by the Lord to send these twelve men into this promised land for a period of forty days. They found that it was everything that God had said it would be, land flowing with milk and honey. I've often tried to visualize streams of milk and streams of honey running down the mountainside, but even the greatest enthusiast for Israel would never describe it thus. But it was a fertile land, the cattle grazed on its hillsides, the sweet flowers that grew in its ravines and along its brooks. The maid gave sufficient for the bees to have provided it with all the sweet, the good, the rich, the blessed, and it was a land that was everything that God had said it would be. They came to the brook, and there they found a bunch of grapes so large that the best way to carry it was to simply put it a straddle over a stick and on the shoulders of two men. I've had a little difficulty believing that it was so heavy that it couldn't have been carried by one man, but I rather think that this was to protect it so that the grapes wouldn't have been bruised and wouldn't have been hurt, so that it could be shown just as it had been taken. But even if it was that big, well and good, I'm not going to argue with it at all. It was a happy land, it was a joyful land, it was a rich land and a blessed land, and a land that could have been everything that the people of Israel longed for and wanted. But there were giants in the land, men, the sons of Anak, it was said, that were tall. Now you might be interested to know that long before vitamins were available in their multiple form, people weren't quite as tall as they are today. Have you ever gone to a museum and seen the size of the uniforms worn by the American soldiers? And to see the dresses that were worn by women of 150 years ago? I don't want to say that vitamins are all to blame for it, but certainly the American stature and frame seems to be somewhat larger. So a giant probably would have been a person seven or seven and a half feet tall. And I have seen several of this size in the tall stork people of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. At any rate, they seemed to just tower over the Jewish people, the Israelites that had come. They knew that their arm was longer and sword was sharper, and that this was going to be a difficult thing. But do you actually know what happened? They were afflicted with the sin that is always popular. Have you realized there's one sin that is always in good standing? You can have that sin and you'll never be embarrassed. You'll always find company. You'll always be justified. It'll always be acceptable. It won't hurt your social standing. It isn't going to break fellowship for you. It isn't going to embarrass you. The only thing it'll do is ruin you. You know what sin that is? It's the sin of unbelief. It's the sin that's described in Romans, Hebrews, the 12th chapter, when the sin which did so easily beset them. And several of the translators have said, this is the sin that is in good standing. Well, it is my conviction that it is the root of all sin. It is probably the sin of all sins, and it is the sin that must be dealt with. What is the effect of this? As they looked at the inhabitants of the land, as they studied their fortified cities, as they saw the muscles bulging on their sword arms, and saw the length of their bow and the length of their arrows, the only thing they could do was say, we will be destroyed. They forgot that God had performed ten miracles in bringing them out of Egypt. They forgot that God had carried them across the Red Sea. They forgot that God had given them water in the desert. They forgot that he protected them. All of the blessings of the past were completely obliterated in their memories. The only thing they could say was the problems of the present, and the experiences of the past had absolutely no value to them. As though somehow, because these people were big, God was little, and they were measuring their present situation not by what they'd learned of God in the past, but by themselves and what they would do if they were God in such a situation. The sin of unbelief, and the consequence of this, well, it was terrific. Ten of them agreed to gather to report that it was a good land, but they couldn't go out. Two of them said, as Joshua and Caleb affirmed so eloquently, God has taken away their defense, and God has delivered them to us. But the people sided with the ten. I said the sin of unbelief is always popular. It'll always get a crowd. It'll always find support. It'll always be justified. It'll always be accepted. The sin of unbelief. But the result was, they turned on those that said, let us go up. And the consequence, they said, we will stone Caleb and stone Joshua. Get rid of these men that are going contrary to what we want and what we feel we should do. And so right was apparently on the cross, and fire was on the throne. And so often it seems that this is the case. Now, my dear friend, may I impress upon you today that if you have been kept out of the land of God's blessing, it is because of this sin of unbelief. You have said something like this. There isn't any use for me to break. There isn't any use for me to deal with my failure. There isn't any use for me to confess my sin. Wait till he does. Wait till she does. When they do, then I will. And so consequently moved away from the two that say, meet God on his terms, stand on his word, step out in the direction of obedience, and God will meet you and God will bless you. And so if you have not entered into the best that God has for you, whether it is something vile or something subtle, it has to come back to unbelief. Unbelief has kept you from breaking. Unbelief has kept you from bending. Unbelief has kept you from bowing. You know perhaps the attitude is wrong. You know the actions were wrong. But you'll say, I'll lose more by obedience than I will by continued disobedience. And unbelief is the explanation, and unbelief is the reason. Always this is the case. Inevitably it is so. For instance, if a person says, well, I must have something, position, and I can't get it by recognition of my ability and merit, so what I will do is tear down others. I will become hypercritical. I will just attack everyone because if I can prove that everyone is bad, then I am proving that I am good. And those whom I attack must be smaller than me or I wouldn't attack them, and consequently I must be bigger than they are. Rather than resting one's case in God's hand, saying God will exalt in due time and give me all I deserve and all I need, unbelief says take things in your own hands. Get your own rights. Insist on your own way. You can take it with every sin that's been in the catalog of human iniquity, and it all goes right back to unbelief. And consequently when we see that these people have come from their 40-day survey and report to the people we can't, they have allowed, opened the door for every other kind of crime and sin. Has this happened with you? Have you come out of Egypt? Have you been forgiven of your past sins? And yet somewhere along the line there's been a view of the land of blessing, the land of promise, the land of victory, the land of the fullness of Christ, and yet you haven't entered in. Ten days, ten weeks, ten months, ten years have gone by that you've heard these truths and you haven't entered in. Oh, there's only one answer, and that answer is unbelief. It may have led to many other sins as it did and we'll see tonight in the case of Israel, but this is the root of it. Unwillingness to believe that God is able to do what he's promised and what he is purposed to do. Well, thank God there was a Moses there, and thank God, dear Christian friend, that there's a greater than Moses on your side. There's someone seated at the right hand of the Father today representing me and representing you and holding us up before the Father. Our names are written on his hands and he is there. He's there before the Father in your place, in your stead, representing you and telling the Father to be patient with you, that he knows that there was nothing in you but sin and uncleanness, and that he is ministering, he is working, and that you will come just as Moses went into the presence of God on behalf of Israel here this time when they have refused to go in. And God says to Moses, listen, I'll take away this people and if you will make a better, a greater, a larger people. And Moses says, no, no, you brought them out, you've delivered them, you've extended mercy to them, and it'll be to your shame, it'll rob you of glory, you'll be sullied by it, you'll be hurt by it, your glory will be smudged by it. You can't destroy this people, you must sustain them. Oh dear heart today, how glad you should be that you have a high priest that's interceding for you, that's representing you. Do you realize if it weren't for that, all of us would be instantly dealt with the way Ananias and Sapphira were. If it were not for the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is representing us, the first time we lied to the Holy Ghost, this is what would have happened. The first time we made a vow that we didn't take, this is what it would have transpired. But we have one there that is interceding, one that's pleading. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. But do you understand that while there was forgiveness and there was escape from the sudden destruction of the entire land, there was a pardon with a penalty. Unless any of you should begin to think lightly of this terrible sin of unbelief and its evil consequences in your life, may I remind you this morning that the spirit of God has made it perfectly clear that they suffered a tremendous penalty. Sin always carries with it a penalty. You understand that whereas forgiveness will draw the nail out of the board, it doesn't draw the hole out. It will take away the death in it, but it won't take away the scar of it. And so you can be sure of this, that if in the past the spirit of God has been pleading with you to deal with habits, to deal with attitude, to break before him, that you have resisted him, that you have acquired in this period of resistance damage that even God can't erase. Let it be understood that there is a continuing damage done to the human spirit by persistence in unbelief, that even forgiveness can't remove. The scars that were there will remain there. And years afterwards, if today you break, today you bend, today you know forgiveness, today you enter in, when you are on the deathbed and about to meet the Lord, you look back of those days that were before today, when the spirit of God was pleading with you, and in stubbornness and rebellion you were unwilling to break, you'll see the loss, you'll see the shame, you'll see the grief it caused your high priest, and there'll be scars in your heart that even the blessing today and from today on can't erase. Sin is not a little thing, and anything that keeps us from entering into God's best for us is an enormous thing. And any attitude or disposition that you might have that grieves him whose name is holy, that keeps you from entering into the land of victory and blessing in the fullness of Christ, to be a channel for the overflow of his spirit, is an enormous thing, however little it may be in the eyes of society, or however little it may be in your eyes up until now. It is enough for you to realize that the consequence of grieving God and robbing God of the freedom to be in you and through you what he wants to be, has enormous consequences. And so it was that these ten that came back, that had said that they shouldn't go in, were actually destroyed. They had to be slain because they had led the people into such a great sin against the Lord. The consequences of this were that there was to be not only the ten who sinned, but the effect that it had upon others, wasted years. Oh dear heart, let us for a moment suppose that you are born again, that your sins are under the blood, and yet somehow or other you've been unwilling to deal with traits the spirit of God has shown you. Or you've been in meetings, you've been in conferences, you've been in camp times when the presence of God was wonderfully real, and God let the spotlight of his truth come into your heart and he showed you this. But you got out of the atmosphere, you went out of that sense of his immediate and wonderful presence, and soon you had acquiesced to go home the same way you'd come. And the result, the result was that when you got back you were a kind of a spiritual typhoid Mary. You remember the case, I believe it was New York City, if I'm not mistaken, someplace in the east, that they found that they had dealt with all the sources of typhoid. They dealt with the milk and the water and everything that could bring it until finally they found there was one woman, one person, and she was known as Typhoid Mary because she herself hadn't had the disease. But everywhere she went people became infected. She'd work in a home and they were infected. She'd go to a store and they'd get typhoid. She was a carrier. And suppose it is that some six, seven, eight, ten years ago, 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, you learned that there was a life in Christ where the Spirit of God could fill you and Christ could live in you his life. But you've just never entered in. It's just been a little thing, maybe a habit, maybe an attitude, maybe a disposition. I don't know, but you know and God knows what it is. But look at all that infected by it. Ten people kept a whole generation from going in. Have you been able to keep people from going in, sowing disbelief, sowing rebellion, sowing the heart attitude? Have you been in the effect of these ten in causing others to stumble and others to fall and others to fail of entering into God's blessing for them? You can't sin alone. You can't sin alone. It's going to hurt someone. It's going to hurt someone dear besides hurting him whose hands have been pierced for you. It's going to hurt others. And so it is that we discover that these ten that came back had caused the entire tribe, the whole nation to fall. And they're under the sentence, God said, you can't enter in because of your stubbornness and because of your unbelief. And so what do we find? The message this morning is improper or incomplete repentance. And so in the 14th chapter in the 40 to the 45th verses, we discover that the people rose up early in the morning and get them into the top of the mountain saying, lo we, we be here and we'll go up into the place which the Lord has promised. You see, they felt so sorry for their loss. They felt so sorry for their plight. They were so grieved that they couldn't go in. They were so unhappy about the fact that they'd lost all of this that instead of dealing with it the way they ought to, they simply took things in their own hands and without God's guidance and without his presence, they said they were going to make up for it. There's a right and a wrong way to deal with sin. The wrong way is the way of the arrogant heart, the way of the egotistical mind, the way of the self-sufficient, the way of the one who says, I'm going to turn over a new leaf. Volume 10, page 490. This is usually the way with the new leaf business. They've done it again and again and again and all it has ever brought is further frustration and despair. Oh no, it isn't a new leaf. Israel said we're going to turn over a new leaf. So if God won't let us go into the land, we'll go in on our own. We made a mistake. Oh yes, how easy it is to make a mistake. How easy it is to say I've made a mistake. How hard it is to say I've sinned. Mistakes, you see, are just a little lack of judgment. This wasn't a mistake. This was a sin. My friend, the only way that you can ever deal with that which grieves God is to call it what God calls it. The sin of unbelief, the sin of rebellion, the sin of stubbornness, the sin of discouragement, the sin of disappointment, whatever it is, call it by the name that God gives it. They didn't do that. Oh we've erred, yes. We made a mistake, yes. Poor judgment, yes. But you see, their hearts were stubborn, evidenced by the fact that they still wouldn't submit to Moses. They still wouldn't submit to God's word. They were going to rectify it in their own way. And so instead of breaking before the Lord, instead of coming before Moses and Aaron and throwing themselves down saying we've sinned, we've sinned and done this great evil in God's sight, what will God have us to do? They took things into their own hands. And so the next day they got up on a hillside, looked over across the valley, saw the people, drew their swords out and said lo we dashed down the hill and the Amalekites and the Canaanites were destroyed them completely. And so it is that improper repentance is instead of breaking before God, it is to simply deal with the circumstance and deal with the situation. How many times you see a person is being pressed by the Spirit of God into a situation that God wants to use for their good by causing them to break before him. And they don't break before God, they simply adjust to the situation. This is what Israel tried to do. They tried to adjust. We're living in a day when the psychologists and psychiatrists tell us that the end of all being is adjustment. This is absurd. The most maladjusted person in history as far as any social evaluation is concerned was our Lord Jesus Christ. But there's only one proper adjustment that he had and that's the one that you and I must have. He looked into the eyes of his father and said father what will thou have me to do? He broke. He broke. And you and I are being coached and counseled by our generation to adjust to our failures and adjust to our circumstances and adjust to our dispositions and it will lead us to nothing but further grief and heartache. God didn't say adjust to this person and finally acquiesce to this situation. God didn't allow the person to come into your life or the problem to come into your life in order for you to make an adjustment to the person or problem. He's used the person, he's used the situation, he's used the circumstance to press us to make an adjustment with him. And the only adjustment that's a proper adjustment is one of utter breaking and absolute bowing and complete bending before the Lord. And this is the only way for blessing and Israel wouldn't do it. They continued to transgress even when they were trying to undo their previous sin. They were unwilling to meet God on his terms and so they thought that they could somehow make it up by doing in their own strength what they had been unwilling to do with God's power and God's anointing. God asked for brokenness dear heart, not for bargaining, not for self-confidence and not for braggadocio. God doesn't ask you to grit your teeth and clench your fists and set your jaw and say, from now on I'm not going to do that thing. No, no, no. That isn't what God asks of me or of you. God asks of us that we recognize that in us, in our flesh, there's no good thing. God asks of us that we recognize that our habits of unbelief and our disposition of disobedience and the whole past is but the proof of our utter, utter spiritual defilement. There was, I told you, Reginald Wallace who saw it and said that the happiest day of his Christian life was the day that it finally dawned upon him that he couldn't live the Christian life. He broke. For up until then, Reginald Wallace, the son of missionaries and himself a missionary and an outstanding Christian leader, was absolutely confident that he could face the Amalekites and he could deal with the Canaanites. And so he was rushing down this hill and rushing down that hill and coming back in failure only to go to a conference and there to hear something and then to set his jaw again, turn over a new leaf and rush into further failure. But one day it dawned on him. One day his eyes opened and one day he broke. I can't. I can't live the Christian life. I can't be anything else than I am. I can't do any other than I've done. I am full of sin. And when he broke, then God could work for him. Oh, have you come to the place, dear heart, when you've realized that you can't live the Christian life, but only he can? Have you? I wonder. The evidence is going to be given to your heart for what we do in the next two minutes. And whether you are of that number that rushed down the hill or whether you are of the number that cast themselves at the feet of God and brokenness, you're going to determine as we bow our heads for a closing word of prayer. Don't try to say you haven't failed. We know you too well. You know yourself too well. And above all, God knows us too well. Don't try to say you haven't had unbelief. You know, and I know, and God knows you have. Don't try to say that you haven't had a desire to be better than you are, because if you've been born of God, you have, and God knows it. But the question is, what have you done about it? What have you done about your past failures? What have you done about sin? What have you done about evil disposition? What have you done about tongue? What have you done about imagination? Have you just gone and said, oh Lord, forgive, and I'll do better next time? Well, you haven't done better next time. Or have you just gotten to the place where you say, well, that's my besetting sin. There isn't anything even use to confess it anymore. What have you done about it? This is the question. Have you been rushing down the hill of good intention to meet the enemy in the battle of, in the valley of failure? Come creeping back up to a good intention again and then to fail? What have you done? What have you done? Have you been like Israel? You didn't meet God on his terms, improper repentance. What have you done about it? Well, I'll tell you, my dear, there's only one thing for you to do, and that's to face the fact that God has used these circumstances and situations to show you that in you there's no good thing. No good thing. Uncleanness and failure and sin and iniquity, and that's all there is. But have you been willing to admit it? Have you been willing to deal absolutely with all sin, with all that's there that grieves him? Have you? Have you been willing to become an utter brokenness before the Lord, absolutely dealing? I'll tell you the ones God's blessing, the ones he's taking into the land. These are the company, the ones that are before him in brokenness. For he said, the broken and the contrite hearty spirit he will not despise. The sacrifices of God are broken in the contrite spirit. The one that dwell with him in his high and holy place are them that have a broken and a contrite spirit. Now I know this, that if you haven't allowed the pressures and circumstances and failures and sins of the past to bring you to brokenness, then you have been deceiving yourself, you've been robbing God of glory, you've been a hindrance to the cause of Christ. Oh, so many terrible, terrible things have resulted from being unbroken. But if you're prepared to come today, just as you are, on the basis of absolute brokenness, completely at the end of yourself, willing to deal with all sin, to confess it and forsake it, and then to tell God that it isn't just to be forgiven, but that he must give you himself and his life, then I know this, that he will not despise the broken and the contrite spirit. What will you do about it? I wonder today if there are those that have said, yes, yes, yes, this is me, my life, my experience. I've seen the promise, but I've been unable to enter in through unbelief. But I am at the end of myself. I am grateful that I have a high priest that's praying for me. I'm grateful my heart is still burdened and concerned. Thank God he's not led me to the I care. And today I want to indicate that I am utterly, utterly at the end of myself. And I'm prepared to deal with everything God shows me and bow before his feet, helpless, to come with all my need and to take all his provision. If this is your desire, would you stand right where you are now? Oh, it's hard on Sunday morning to stand. But for me to have told you that God honors brokenness and not to give you an opportunity would be to rob him. And you, would you stand right where you are and say, yes, I'm utterly at the end of myself. Thank you. Thank God. Yes. Are there others? Yes. Thank God. Please remain standing, please. Are there others? Heads bowed, eyes closed. Are there any others? Yes. Young men and women upstairs here. Listen, one thing I want to just ask one thing now. I know that if I did what I ought to do, I'd be standing. I haven't stood. But, oh, I know my need. Pray for me. Would you raise your hand? This will help you. Yes, I see it. God bless you. Yes. Yes, I see it. I'm not standing. But if I did what I ought to do, I would be. I want you that are still seated to face the issue. Are there others? Yes, I see it. God bless you. Are there others? Yes. Yes. Yes, we are. Now let us stand for benediction and prayer. We love thee too much, our Father, to say, give us unbroken peace. We trust thee too much to say, let us go at ease. But we say to thee now, for the sake of thy dear son, continue to work. And if it would be better for some to lose all taste for food, all appetite for fellowship, and to go into the valley of despair and grief over their failure and sin, because they have not minded thee or whatever it is our dealing, do that, Lord. Deal with us as we have need for those that have known brokenness, known the working of the Holy Ghost in their lives, known forgiveness and pardon and cleansing. Oh, let grace and mercy and peace and joy unspeakable and full of glory be their portion. And for all with whom thou are dealing, continue to deal until we can enter into the fullness of thy love for us. May we go praying, go sensing thy presence. May the love of God the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Ghost be and abide with us now and always. Amen.