Why is understanding the hierarchy of spiritual authority so important?  Because of the hour that we’re in.  It’s amazing how many of us are taken aback and resent the foul language that might come through our TV, but we will watch the world’s rebellion and disorder against God’s family, against the home, and it just kind of goes by.  Don’t get caught up in that spirit of rebellion.

In Numbers 16, we saw that God judged Kora and Dathan for this spirit.  The ground opened and swallowed them.  Everything that pertained to them, all of their living, everything that they had worked for, their children, their animals—everything was destroyed.  Now, put yourself there for just a moment; you’re watching this.  How many of you would watch this take place and say, “You know what?  I’m going show a little more respect to Moses.  I’ve never seen anything like this before.”  But what took place was, according to Numbers 16:41, “The very next day all the congregation came and ‘…murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord.’”  Back in Numbers 14, they were already appointing a new leader.  They had rejected Moses and they said, “We’re going to find the chief among us to lead us back to Egypt.”  That was about the spies, you remember.  They wouldn’t enter in, and they had the conflict, and the Lord spoke to them.  “These ten times you’ve said, I’ve brought you out here to kill you.  I’ve given you a land that flows with milk and honey and you’ve rejected it.  Only Caleb, this man who has another spirit in him, is going to see it, and Joshua.  The rest of this generation, you’re dying in the wilderness!”

This is what we’re believing God for here in this community.  I trust that none of the old guard will die in the wilderness; that they will all have the spirit of Joshua and Caleb.  It can be hard since many of the old guard spent too long in Egypt, in the world, and it’s hard to unlearn and get away from a lot of those things.  I’m not saying it’s not possible.  I’m saying what we need to do is walk in the Spirit and we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh; amen?  But it’s in there.  

What we’re seeing here is that this is the heart of natural man.  Accusing Moses the next day showed they were full of themselves.  Many of us have dealt with these things before and been delivered from them, and this stuff comes back and grabs hold of you.  Then, instead of taking the spirit of Joshua and Caleb, our minds go back to the leeks and the onions and Egypt.  It’s interesting the phrase you find there, they equated it to the Promised Land.

There is an order.  God set the order and God defends it.  He places the gifts as it pleases Him.  The Scriptural mandate is that these gifts are there for our good.  In 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13, we see we’re to esteem God’s leaders, a powerful admonition to us there.  We don’t want to see any resurrection of the old man evidencing itself in us.  The old man is the rebel; the old man is the child of Adam.  “In me, (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.”