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The book of the Bible that we call Numbers is a divinely inspired part of the scripture but it did not have to be written. It was written because of the bad decision of a group of people to doubt God. And the book of Numbers is not an exciting or faith building book because it details the lives of people whom God had rejected because of their unbelief. Such lives are destined to be devoid of promise and good. But the book of Numbers was written as a warning to you and I lest we repeat the shortcomings of ancient Israel in our lives.

When you think of Numbers you ought to remember that "you don't want to end up like these people." In the book of Exodus we find the terrific story of how a Pharaoh rose up to rule Egypt who didn't remember the good deeds of Joseph and made the now numerous Hebrew people slaves. For four hundred years, the children of God were common slaves to the whims of the Egyptian government. They made bricks and built structures and were driven by slave drivers day and night. The story is a wonderful one because of how it turned out. God sent a deliverer, a man named Moses to convince Pharaoh to let all of this free slave labor to leave Egypt! Pharaoh didn't want to do so at first and so God brought ten plagues upon Egypt, each worse than the one that was before. It wasn't the frogs and the Nile river being turned to blood that got to Pharaoh's hardened heart but rather the final plague of the death of the firstborns which included the death of Pharaoh's own child. In a moment of grief, Pharaoh let the Israelis go and then when he realized the magnitude of his decision -- that he was letting go millions of free labor -- he regretted it. Then when someone brought word that the Israelis had taken the worse possible route out of Egypt and were south between two immense mountain cliffs with the impassable Red Sea in front of them, Pharaoh decided to bring them back and so he organized his army and pinned them against the sea with the mountains on either side.

But all didn't go as planned for Pharaoh because there was a real, Almighty God who got involved! Israel hadn't gone to that place under their own will but were following a pillar of fire by the night that represented the presence of God leading them. When Pharaoh's army came up behind them, the pillar of God's presence moved between Israel and the enemy chariots, preventing the Egyptian army from attacking or even seeing the Hebrews. Then while the Egyptians were trying to figure out what to do, Moses obeyed the command of God and stretched out his arm over the sea and God split the Red Sea and pushed the waters back and dried out the ground underneath and Israel passed across the sea on dry dirt!

Then God moved the pillar of His presence from in front of the Egyptians and they looked up and saw that Israel had escaped across the sea and that the path of dry ground was still there with the water standing up on either side and foolishly, they rushed after Israel. God let the Egyptian army get completely into the seabed and then flicked the wind switch off causing the walls of water to rush over the armor clad men, drowning the entire army and effectively setting Israel free from any worry of the Egyptians of their past! Then, after they had celebrated their victory, they discovered the reason that God had brought them this way because God then met them on a mountain with thunder and lightening where He gave them His Word and the plans for a place for Him to dwell upon earth, the Tabernacle. And after this, then they were ready to go to the Promised Land, the new home that God had prepared for them!

There is a reason that all of this is recorded for us to read and it's not just to put more books in the Bible or because God was goofing around. God allowed all of this to happen -- and even directed all of this to happen -- so that we could see a clear picture of salvation today in the lives of those ancient Israelites. Like that generation of Israelites, we were born into the slavery and bondage that God calls sin. Sin rules our minds and actions from even the earliest ages. And the wages of sin is death -- nothing profitable and nothing to look forward to, and this sinful world with it's ways of living that seems right to your flesh but is completely wrong to God's holiness and Word is just as much the miserable place to be as Egypt was for the Israelites. Like Pharaoh of old, sin is a cruel taskmaster that demands its way and doesn't care what happens to you or how much of your life is destroyed in the mean time. You need to remember that sin IS fun and pleasurable, because the Bible says that it is, but it also states that it is "pleasurable" "for a season." That is, sin begins with great fun but after the initial season of pleasure, it becomes not fun at all and eventually leads you to destruction and pain and heartache! Such is the ways of Egypt! Such is the ways of this world!

But just like in the story of Exodus, God didn't leave us alone in our sin, but sent us a deliverer! He was known as the "prophet like unto Moses" and He was similar to Moses in many ways! We know Him as Jesus Christ and like Moses, He began His ministry after a forty day and night fast. Like Moses, He was a shepherd. Like Moses, the devil tried to kill Him by killing all of the baby boys of His generation, but like Moses, God protected Him! There are a lot of similarities between Jesus and Moses. Like Moses, Jesus is our savior sent to tell the devil to "let my people go" and to lead us out of the Egypt of sin! Like Moses, Jesus worked supernatural miracles to support His claim to the people of God.

But there were some great differences too! Jesus was more than just a "man sent by God" but was God, Himself, come to redeem us! Moses commanded Israel to kill a Passover Lamb and apply it's blood to avoid the penalty of death, but Jesus became that Passover Lamb and shed His blood for us! And the He resurrected so that we could follow Him out of our sin and promised us a better place and a greater place and place of promise!

And the lesson on salvation doesn't stop there, because Paul said that Israel was "baptized unto Moses" in the Red Sea and so we find that that Red Sea represents the waters of baptism, but now we don't take the name of Moses, but instead we go through the waters with the name of the one who was like unto Moses but so much greater, Jesus Christ! And it's a Red Sea not because of the physical color but of the spiritual color of our sins being washed white as snow in the blood of the Lamb! And it's not the Egyptian army that is being annihilated but our sinful past that was chasing us and trying to destroy us is what is washed away, completely destroyed to never bother us again! How many of you have had your sins washed away completely in the Red Sea of water baptism!?

And you can't stop there in the lesson of salvation taught to us by the children of Israel. Because if they would have stopped on the other side of the Red Sea and not continued on in following the direction of the Lord, they would have never created a tabernacle and never had God's presence dwelling inside of them and never learned the Word of God! Paul said:

Our body is now the tabernacle in which God wants to dwell! So coming out of Egypt is not enough, water baptism with your past washed away is not enough, but you must allow the Word of God to come into your life and allow your body to be a temple for the Spirit of God to dwell in! Only that gets you truly ready for what God has for you!

There are some churches and preachers and people who only want to believe that the Lamb has been slain and don't feel like they need to change anything of their lifestyle to be saved. They think that they can live like hellions and just because they "believe that Jesus died for their sins," they are saved. That's as crazy as an Israelite following all of the commandments of Moses and killing the Passover Lamb and putting the blood on the doorposts and then refusing to leave Egypt! The purpose of the Lamb being killed was so that they could get out of Egypt, it would have been absurd to choose to stay there and think that you are all right because you believed that the Lamb was killed! The Lamb has been slain for you and you need to believe it but if you choose to stay in sin, then what good has the death of Jesus Christ done for you!? Just believing that He died isn't enough if you miss the entire point of WHY He died which was to bring you out of your Egypt of sin and into a better walk and a better place!

There are some churches who have come out of a blatantly sinful lifestyle but they teach and preach that water baptism is unnecessary. That is as absurd as an Israelite coming out of Egypt with Moses and saying "I'm not going to cross that Red Sea." What would have happened? The Egyptian army would have destroyed them and that's exactly what happens when people deny the truth of Jesus' name baptism: they're past ends up catching up with them and destroying them before they reach the plan that God had for them! Crossing the Red Sea is a vital part of your salvation from Egypt! God doesn't just want to bring you out of sin, but to cleanse you from the sinful actions in your past that are coming to destroy you and overcome you! You came too late to tell me that water baptism in not necessary for salvation. If you deny it, then your own life will soon prove that you were wrong!

And there are some people who preach that water baptism is enough and that you don't need the infilling of the Holy Ghost to be saved. To which I say "hogwash." What would have happened if after leaving Egypt and after coming through the Red Sea, and after hearing God's Word and commandment to build a temple, Israel would have said "no way" we don't want God dwelling within us day in and day out?" What if Israel would not have built the tabernacle? I'll tell you what would have happened, they would have died right there and the visible manifestation of the presence of God would have gone away and they would have lived and died in the dry place called the wilderness!

When people teach that the Holy Ghost is not necessary for salvation, their churches and movements and services dry up and become shallow dry spiritual places. They lose the supernatural and the visible manifestation of God's presence in their services! And they die spiritually! Receiving the Holy Ghost is important, because God brought you this far for your body to become a temple of the Holy Ghost! You can't stop! He delivered you from Egypt and delivered you from your past so that He could dwell with you and live with you. People who deny the infilling of the Holy Ghost deny the whole point to the entire reason why Jesus Christ came! He didn't die for you to have, dead, dry wilderness church! He didn't die for you to have some man-made religion. He didn't die for you to come out and die in vast wasteland! He died for you to get to a Promised Place, but you are not ready to go there until you have come out of Egypt, had your past erased in the Red Sea, and became a tabernacle of the Almighty presence of God! This is the plan of God that He has had in place for generations! If you want to change the salvational plan from that taught by Jesus and the Apostles then you've got to do more than just remove the book of Acts in the Bible, but you'd better take out Exodus also! God had a plan from the very beginning! We see it in Genesis in Creation with God bringing light on the dark void and then causing water to move and new life to appear. That plan foreshadows Repentance, Water Baptism, and the infilling of the Holy Ghost and so does the route of Exodus of the Jewish people. When we preach with Peter that you must "Repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and that you need to receive the Holy Ghost." . . . When we preach with Jesus that you must be born again, born of the water and of the Spirit! . . . then we are not teaching a doctrine made in the reformation or some denomination. We are not teaching a plan of men, but rather the plan of the eternal God for salvation! Don't mess with the message! There is only one way to heaven, and it comes from doing what He has commanded us to do! We must follow His plan! I don't care what some preacher says or some denomination says. What did God say from the beginning!? He has not changed! He had a plan in place!

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I've mentioned that part of the story because I want to impress upon you what God intended for Israel and how important it is to grasp even today. God intended for the book of Exodus to be followed up by a book of how they came into the Promised Land because as soon as they had received the Word of God and the Spirit of God in their tabernacle, God began to lead them quickly through the wilderness towards the Promised Place that He had promised them. They had paused for a few weeks to receive His Word and build the tabernacle, but it was the intention of God that they move directly from there into the Promised Place of God. The wilderness that they were passing through was to be a temporary stage where they learned to trust in God's Word more than anything else and then they were to enter into the blessings of God. That was the plan.

What happened was that they got to the edge of the Promised Land and selected twelve spies, one from each tribe to go and "spy" out the land and tell them about it before they entered into it. The twelve spies all came back with great reports that the land was a plentiful and as beautiful as God had said that it was, but ten of the spies added this to their report:

And about this time Caleb, one of the spies stood up with another named Joshua and said "this is a bunch of nonsense. God has given us this land, and with His help, we can take it! Let's take it now in the name of Jehovah." But notice the next verse:

Despite the repeated exhortations of the Joshua and Caleb, the common people believed the negative report of doubt and began to murmur and complain! The people who had just seen God wipe out the entire Egyptian army and descend upon Mount Sinai and into the tabernacle were now scared of a few giants because they believed the words of doubting people and not the voice of faith!

God's response was to get livid and angry with the entire generation. We read His Words in our text. God said that not one of the adults of this generation who had doubted would ever set foot in the Promised Land but that they would wander in the wilderness a year for each day that the spies had spied out the land: forty. And God said no less than three times "your carcasses shall fall in the wilderness!" Every person that had doubted that was over the age of twenty would die and not enter in. The only people who would enter into the Promised Land would be those who had not doubted. That would include Caleb and Joshua. Even though very few preachers ever mention it, that would include a few other men. For example Aaron's son Eleazar, the heir High Priest would live to enter into the Promised Land (Joshua 14:1). But everyone of this generation who doubted would die in the wilderness away from the Promised Places of God because of their doubt! And furthermore those who hadn't doubted would have to wait until the entire generation of doubters died off and passed away until they themselves could enter into the Promised Place. What God had intended to be a generation of Promise became a generation of Passing. And then God raised up the next generation as the generation of Promise, instead!

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Let me preach to you now, what God would like me to say to you:

I'm preaching to people whom God has revealed Himself to as the One, True, Living God! He has brought you out of this evil world and died as the sacrificial Lamb in order for you to have a plan to get out of the Egypt of sin! You have had your sins washed away in the Red Sea of water baptism and you have become the tabernacle of the Spirit of God through the infilling of the Holy Spirit! The Word of God has gone forth into your lives and now you stand ready to entered the Promised Place that God has ordained for you to be all along.

The Promised Land does NOT represent heaven. Heaven will not have idolatry to tear down and giants waiting to fight. Heaven will not have walled cities of heathens that must be conquered. Heaven will be God in control in all. The Promised Land does not represent the heavenlies, but rather the Promised Place of God's blessing and anointing that God has decreed for your life. You see God has a place of spiritual prosperity and anointed power that He has promised for your life. Coming out of Egypt and receiving the Holy Ghost was just to get you to the place where you could and would do what He has commanded for you to do! But it becomes your choice as to whether or not you will enter in and face the giants of your life. It becomes your choice as to whether or not you will conquer your fears and scars of the past and be what God has commanded for you to do. It is up to you to truly sell out to Him and live for His kingdom and His will in every area of your life! Because to enter into the Promised Place, the only way that you will survive is to obey every little thing of His commands and to allow His Word to govern every part of you! And so most of you stand having to decide to enter in or to doubt and to stay in the wilderness.

God has a specific Promised Place for our church, here in Castroville. There is a reason that this church has not closed and that God has done what He has done, because God has a plan and a promised Place of blessing for this church to fulfill and attain. It is not only the will of God for us to build a new building but to fill it up and build again! It's the perfect will of God for this to become a cornerstone church body in the kingdom of God with missionaries and preachers and pastors developed and sent from this place. You say "Castroville?" To which I say "Antioch?" But that was the church that impacted the world in the book of Acts: far more than the church in the big city of Jerusalem! The ministry of Paul and Barnabas and Silas and from that Timothy and John Mark and Titus and Apollos and Aquila and Priscilla and pretty much most of who's who in the New Testament were all a direct result of the will of God being done in Antioch!

And so it's important to understand that God has not delivered you from Egypt to just sit here and for this to be a "wilderness church" but rather God has ordained the generation of believers under the sound of my voice to be the generation of Promise! To be the ones who enter in the Promised Place that God has for this people in this area! But it's up to you! The question is not "is it God's will?" but rather "will you enter in?"

Some people want to bargain with God and not sell completely out and completely obey all of God's Words or believe the voice of doubt and not become all that God wants them to be through total submission and total obedience. And somehow they think that God will bargain with them and still let them be what they should be and anoint them. But I'm here to tell you that God will not bargain! If you refuse to enter in, then God will allow the generation of Promise to become a generation of Passing and He will wait until the doubters and the uncommitted and the unforgiving to either die spiritually or physically before our church enters into the Promised Place! God will let this generation become a generation of passing and wait on the next generation if that's what it takes to have a sold out, on fire in love with truth and holiness, people here! God will not compromise.

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The issue is not what I'm going to believe, because I believe that God can conquer through us anything and that the Promised Places! There are some Joshuas and Calebs here that believe it too! But if we all don't grab a hold of faith and sell out as we should, then those of us who believe will have to wait for the generation of passing to pass before we see it happen!

I'm preaching hard and I don't mean to offend you but this is what God wanted me to preach to you. God's tired of excuses of why you can't or won't. God's tired of people justifying sin because of their lollygagging around. God's tired of people that are scared to be used by Him. God's sick of people who will listen to the voice of doubt about what He has already said that He will do! Our church is on the edge of the Promised Place, but you decide where we will go! You decide if we will be a generation of passing or a generation of promise.

God's tired of people saying "I'm this way because I've always been this way and I can't change that." or "it's because I always have to face this." It's time to face your giants. It's time to say "I can conquer this." I can be different not through my only strength but through Christ who strengthens me!" Your excuses aren't good enough, you're just listening to the wrong voice!

The evil report of the spies said "We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight!" We could preach a whole message on that phrase! They viewed themselves as incapable of entering into the Promised Places of God and unable to fight giants and so the enemy looked at them with absolutely no fear! Whether your enemy in the Spirit is scared of you and worried about you depends largely on how you view yourself in God and your view of Him. If you view your problems as too much to conquer and impossible then you will never conquer them and they will never be scared of you. But if you view them as with God easily vanquished, then the devil gets worried. How long are you going to use the same old excuses as to why you can't live victorious, win souls, have a good marriage, or be faithful to the will of God? How long? How long are you going to believe the report of doubt? Somebody needs to stand with the Pastor in saying "I can change, I can be different!" Through Christ I can be everything that I need to be and conquer what I need to conquer! How long is it going to be until you view things as "that's no problem with God in my life and living according to His will" and stop being discouraged and sidetracked from the purpose of God? How long are you going to let fear of failure keep you from stepping out in faith? How long are you going to cling to the evil report and not believe God's report for your life? Are you going to be a generation of promise? or a generation of passing?

Are you going to live for Jesus Christ and His kingdom, or this world? It's decision time! You can't serve both! Part of the problem with the Hebrew people, is that despite being delivered from Egypt, they longed for and desired some of the pleasures of Egypt still! They were led out of Egypt but their minds still longed for Egypt! And so God said if you can't get Egypt out of your mind, then I'll let you pass and I'll wait on the next generation because in the next generation there will be people who don't remember Egypt as you remember Egypt and therefore will not use Egypt as an excuse!

I'm preaching to some mothers and fathers and grandmas and grandpas that you still battle with some things from your past. Despite the fact that it was washed away and you are long removed from it, you still believe the lie from the enemy that you can't. You let that old spirit creep back in. Or you let that old habit creep back in. Or you are constantly using your past mistakes as an excuse for your lack of commitment and faithfulness now. God's tired of your excuses. They don't add up. He delivered you and forgave you and it drives Him crazy when His people used as excuses for lack of faith and commitment things that He washed away a long time ago! It's time to move on. But if you will not, then realize that God will let you die in the wilderness of half decision and doubt and will take your children and let them become the generation of promise. They won't have to worry about some of the things you let condemnation beat you up with because they will not have experienced those things, therefore they WILL enter into all that God has for them!

God has great things in store for us! I began this message by telling you that the book of Numbers didn't have to be written. That generation could have responded and changed their doubting and their excuses and put their faith in God and totally sold out to God and been the generation of promise! That was what God had intended! And it is the perfect will of God for this generation to be the generation that sees the great harvest and the mighty miracles and the Promised Place that He has for this church! But you must decide to enter in!

We all came from sinful backgrounds with less than perfect parents and beginnings and we've all been hurt by people who loved us so stop using your past for an excuse.

We've all had to live in a world where life is unfair and we've all lost loved ones and we've all had our shares of disappointments and heartaches and bad decisions; stop using life as an excuse.

We've all had to walk through a wilderness to get here and we've all wondered where God was in our circumstances; stop using your present situations as an excuse.

We've all lived in Egypt and been affected by Egyptian thinking and living and made bad choices that went against the Word of God, stop using sin and it's effects and your flesh as an excuse.

We've all faced trials and tribulations and had someone tell us that we were crazy and the impossible was still the impossible even with Jesus involved. Stop listening to the voice of doubt and using it as an excuse.

We've all had someone treat us wrongly and been done horrible, stop using unforgiveness as an excuse.

It's time for the excuses to fade away and be consumed by selling out to God and facing our giants with a Godly faith! It's not "I can't". Go read your Bible and you'll find that the disciples never looked at something that God wanted them to do and said "I can't." "I can't" wasn't in there vocabulary and it should not be in ours. When you say "I can't obey that," or "I can't change that" or "I can't do that," or "I can't become that." What you are saying is that you are grasshoppers compared to the giants in your eyes. You are listening to the voice of doubt that wants this generation to be a generation of passing.

But God is saying "you can!" "I'll be with you!" But you've got to step out on faith! This is a generation of promise and God fully desires for us to see everything that He has for us, but we must respond in faith! We don't want this generation to become a generation of passing!