The Prepper Broadcasting Network - RELIANCE: Our Zeal has Been Misplaced

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

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Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, welcome back. This is Stephen Menking, the senior editor and host of the On the Objective podcast. And I'm pleased to be bringing you another broadcast in partnership with reliance of the Prepper Broadcasting Network. I've taken a bit of a break here because as James mentioned on his broadcast, I am now the proud father of a baby girl. Our daughter, Ava Grace, Menking, was born on November 14th of 2019. at 2 o'clock in the morning. And that was a miraculous, incredible, challenging, multifaceted process. But suffice it to say, the Lord is ever faithful and so merciful and good and incredible to us.

It's just an incredible blessing that I can't really articulate. The profundity of it is something. that goes beyond my ability to describe here at the moment. But I'm hoping that what stood out to me in the scriptures as I was reading today is going to connect some of these themes about the need for the next generation coming up in the church and the need for the instruction being given to the next generation to focus on the unity that we need to have as the body of Christ in order to maintain and go forth into a harvest that the Lord deserves in this generation, a common topic that we have touched upon many different times in our broadcast here on Reliance.

And I'm going to continue this theme of establishing unity, setting aside petty differences for the sake of discipling the next generation in the effort to bring in the harvest that the Lord is worthy of. Let's go to the Father in prayer. Lord, we give you all of the glory and all of the praise. Lord Jesus, we are overcome by your power, by your might, by your holiness, by your worthiness. Lord, you overwhelm us with your mercies, with your grace, with your faithfulness, who you are, with your abiding presence, with your promises, with your word. Lord, everything that we have is because of you.

And Lord, we pray in Jesus' name that you would give us the right attitude of heart to cherish every single thing, to cherish every single moment, to cherish you, to cherish the lives that you have provided for us. And God, we give you all the glory for it. We ask Jesus that you would open our ears, that you would open our eyes to the things that you want us to see in your word, that you would give us the grace and the discernment through your Holy Spirit to understand and to comprehend the word that you have for us in this hour and what you are calling us into. Lord, give us the strength that each and every one of us need to be obedient to your will in this generation. God, you are so worthy and deserving of a great and vast harvest.

Lord, you want to deliver on your promises exceedingly above everything that we can even begin to imagine, let alone articulate. God, you are the most high, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, Jesus. You are our Savior. And we thank you for your cross. We thank you for what you've done. And so we bring everything to you. we lay it down at the foot of your cross and surrender anew, declaring, Lord, that we have failed to accomplish what we have been called to accomplish in this generation.

There is still so many going astray, so many abandoning the faith, so many caught up in bondage and slavery and prisons of a spiritual nature, and many of a physical, a worldly nature as well. But God, you said that you, Jesus, are the one who sets the captives free. You are the one who is the way, the truth, and the life. Lord, you are the primary, exclusive example that we need to follow. God, give us the strength to cast aside the traditions of men and the deadness of religion and the division that comes there from. and to take up your cross, to follow you into a new move of your Holy Spirit,

into a new calling on this generation, into a new attitude. Lord, we need you to transform our hearts and minds to conform us to your image, Jesus. We need your will to be accomplished. And we pray that you would give us the steadfast will and the, the mercy, the compassionate hearts that we need to speak your truth and righteousness and to extend that truth to all who we come across, including our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus, we love you and we bless you.

We pray that you would anoint our ears, that we would hear what you need us to hear this and every day. In your precious name, we pray. Amen. I'm going to be reading first from, Numbers 11 versus 16 through 29. I'm going to be reading from the new King James version. Numbers 11.

The context here is that the Israelites are in the desert. Moses is leading them. The tabernacle has been established and there are the beginnings of murmurs, the beginnings of these doubts. And they first and foremost focus on food and sustenance. And the people are saying, is God actually able to keep us? And not only that, they are decrying the miracle of the provision of manna. And they are saying, well, we need meat to eat. Oh, we had meat back in Egypt. We had delicacies back when we were in bondage. So the question we would ask ourselves at a baseline is, what can we learn about this dichotomy?

Of course, we would say the picture here is that for many people, it is desirable to have delicacies or presumed comforts inside of bondage than it is to not have. have those delicacies or presumed comforts in the posture of freedom in that kind of environment. So the question would be, are we brothers and sisters, are we now in this generation, this pivotal time looking at our service to the Lord and saying, well, you know, I've given things up perhaps for the cause of ministry, for the cause of Christ? But what have I really gotten? What fruit has really come of this?

It's not necessarily a doubting of the Lord to be able to sustain. It's just a representation of a lack of contentment. And for many people, their walks can have that kind of tone, that kind of tamber to them, in particular because of the circumstances that they find themselves enveloped in, where there is contention and strife unnecessarily, where there isn't discipleship in biblical principles, where there is this just surface level engagement with the Word of God. We need to go deeper in this time,

and we need to not be the ones who are complaining for lack of the delicacies of the world. Now, in this context, Moses is crying out to the Lord and he says, I'm not able to bear all these people alone because the burden is too heavy for me. In fact, he even says to Lord, if you treat me like this by putting me at the head of all of these people who are endlessly complaining and doubting and questioning the Lord, Moses says, please kill me here and now if I have found favor in your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness. He understands that these people are going astray and that the pattern is for them to go astray, even immediately. even while they are witnessing the manna fall from heaven to sustain them each and every day,

except for on the Sabbath. And even as the pillar and the cloud lead them by day and by night, there is clearly the supernatural presence of God in their midst. And yet these complaints still arise. And we do see that same kind of thing in this generation. So Moses fields this complaint to the Lord and says, just take me out of this situation now. And that's also a picture that we see. People in leadership, people in ministry. They see the lack of faithfulness. They see the issues of the

problems with teaching and people pining for the world and this double-mindedness and everything else. And they say this burden is too heavy. And so please just let me be, let me have my own kind of private faith, but don't let me be responsible for these people who continually beleaguer everything and who complain about everything. And it is a challenge. And many people who are called into ministry get worn out by this. They just become jaded and nonplussed with the, with the things of the Lord because of the exposure that they have had to the pettiness that people bring into the house of God and the personal quabbles and everything, everything else like that. It is a sincere challenge.

And the primary passage, starting in verse 16, is set against this context. So the Lord is prescribing a solution to Moses. And his solution is going to involve decentralization. Now, this is a challenge because when we see decentralization, we often as as humans we will think about the hierarchical religious systems that have been set up but the the picture here is god is taking things from just moses in charge and then a role for aaron and the levites as well and he is expanding the influence of his holy spirit so that the the primary responsibility doesn't exclusively fall to moses he is certainly the one of the one who is the closest with God in terms of this relationship, but he will have additional help. This is distinct from the episode where Jethro comes and advises Moses that he needs to appoint leaders of tens and 50s and hundreds, et cetera, to hear matters of the law so that he isn't Moses,

that is, spending 24 hours a day sitting and deciding on disputes that people have. So there is the establishing of these different kinds of systems and this different expansion. But this one in particular is interesting because of the reaction to it, how it plays out, and keep an eye on the role that Joshua plays here. Because our focus in this message is going to be on how the relationship between those currently in leadership positions and the next generation should go. How should we either be drawing narrow lines in terms of our discipleship and in terms of our boundaries in terms of denominations or whether we should be focusing more on the bigger picture?

It's an interesting question, and hopefully as we go through these scriptures, we will begin to find some important takeaways for how we approach these things in our own. lives in this generation. So let's start from verse 16 now that we have the context established. So the Lord said to Moses, gather to me 70 men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them. Bring them to the tabernacle of meeting that they may stand there with you. Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the spirit that is upon you and will put the same upon them. And they shall bear the burden of the people with you that you may not bear it yourself alone.

Then you shall say to the people, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat, for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt. Therefore, the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall eat not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but for a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the Lord who is among you, and have wept before him, saying, why did we ever come up out of Egypt?

Now, let's take a break here because in many of these narratives in the Pentateuch and Exodus and numbers, et cetera, we find that several scholars and many people will argue that the provisions of the Lord, whether it's establishing Aaron to come alongside Moses or establishing these other elders to come alongside Moses here, that these were essentially concessions or not in line with the original plan that the Lord had for his people. And it's because of the lack of faithfulness, the lack of belief that these measures were necessary in order to maintain the system. It calls ahead to the time frame where we're talking about judges before we get into the monarchy. where the intention was to be different, that the nation of Israel would be different than the people groups surrounding them who had kings and rulers in these governmental structures.

But the people demanded a king, and so therefore God gave them Saul and ultimately the Davidic line and all of the difficulties that came as a result of that, the division of the northern and southern tribes, the separatians. and all of the above. So with that history in mind, we do have to understand that there is an argument that these sorts of aspects of expanding or changing the way that the structure is designed are sometimes seen as concessions, sometimes seen as a not necessarily, like we wouldn't want to cast them as failures on behalf of the Lord or anything. or anything like that, but rather things that needed to be implemented because of weaknesses in the people in terms of a lack of faithfulness in God, a lack of being led by God and by God alone, as opposed to by the ways of the world. And so it's a tricky question as it pertains to these religious systems. And for the most part, apart from reminding people of this context, I'm going to be dealing with a different aspect of this narrative. What we're saying

here is that there isn't just one person who is in charge of the entire religious structure. There's now more of a decentralized command. It's not exactly decentralized because you could still perceive a hierarchy of Moses and then these 70 elders. And of course, this gets tied in with a whole host of other difficult challenges and conceptual and theological questions as it pertains in particular to Kabbalah and other sects of Jewish mysticism, et cetera, et cetera. But here we're going to step back from those considerations for a moment to observe what I think is an important principle for us to understand here. So there is this decentralization.

It does happen as a result of Moses complaining because of the people. people's complaints and because of that unfaithfulness. And now we're going to get, we're going to get more of, more of the diagnosis and more of what God is implying for this solution. So in verse 21 and Moses said, the people whom I am among are 600,000 men on foot, yet you have said I will give them meat that they may eat for a whole month. Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them to provide enough for them? Or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them to provide enough for them? And the Lord said to Moses, has the Lord's arm been shortened? Now you shall see whether what I say will happen to you or not. And again, we have this

confusion. If the Lord is going to say something, if the Lord is going to say something definitively, Moses is hearing from the Lord directly, is it going to come to pass or not? This isn't some prophecy about the distant future. God is saying, I am going to do this and I am going to do this now. And so Moses says, well, how is this going to be? And this is our standard reaction. We see it all over the place in terms of Zechariah going all the way through, even back to Abram and Sarah and Sorai at that point is, you know, how are we going to give birth? We're old, et cetera, et cetera. But the Lord is able to accomplish what his word declares. Has the Lord's arm been shortened? No. Absolutely not. So in verse 24, Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered the 70 men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tabernacle. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took the spirit that was upon him and placed the same upon the 70 elders. And it happened when the spirit rested upon them that they

prophesied, although they never did so again. That's an interesting note about they never prophesied again, apart from this initial reception of the Holy Spirit. Here, this Holy Spirit is being provided so that they can continue to bear the burdens. And it's not totally clear what that bearing of the burden is supposed to be. And what it's supposed to mean, you can go into, I'm sure, great theological depth about it. But what I want to point out in terms of the key here is what happens next. in verse 26. But two men had remained in the camp. The name of one was Eldad and the name of the other Mead. And the spirit rested upon them. Now they were among those listed but who had not gone out to the

tabernacle. Yet they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses and said Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. So Joshua, the son of nun, Moses's assistant, one of his choice men answered and said, Moses, my Lord, forbid them. Then Moses said to him, are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Holy Spirit upon them. And Moses returned to the camp, he and the elders of Israel. This is the important moment. How does Joshua receive the news that others are prophesying in the camp? Well, Joshua hears about it and says, Moses forbid them. So at this point in time, Joshua has been Moses's assistant. He's seen great things. He knows who Moses is and the relationship that Moses has to the Lord. He is a portrait of the next generation observing the effectiveness and the relationship of God that people, and specifically a particular person here, a leader of, of the body, of the people of God, the relationship that that person has.

And now this younger generation, Joshua as a type of that, is seeing, and we don't know how read in Joshua is on the plan here. It may be that he doesn't know that this entire thing is happening, or maybe he just wasn't, he wasn't positive. In either case, he didn't have a brief from Moses. that this was desirable and the will of the Lord. But he comes back to Moses and he says, Moses, my Lord, forbid them.

And the best part about all of this is the faithfulness of what Moses says next. And the picture, if we will allow ourselves to draw this connection between this event and what is going on in our generation. is rather powerful for us because of the principles that we can derive from it. So, Moses says to Joshua, are you zealous for my sake? The implication is that Moses is saying that, yes, Joshua is indeed zealous for the sake of Moses. Now, why would Joshua be zealous for the sake of Moses? Well, he was Moses's assistant, and he has been very close to Moses'

throughout this entire process. Joshua is going to be one of the spies who will go into the land, and he, along with Caleb, are going to, he's going to bring a good report, whereas the others do not, but he has been in closer contact with the Lord. He has been raised in this context, and he has grown up, so to speak, seeing these things. It's not necessarily for his entire lifespan, because we don't necessarily have a fixed timeline here. But clearly this is something that he is primarily used to. And he is asking a question, Moses, that is, about Joshua. Where is your zeal?

Because clearly Joshua is zealous. But we need to have our zeal in the right place. And this is where we can begin to draw these important connections. Are we zealous? for the sake of Moses, or are we zealous for the sake of the Lord? Have we narrowed our focus to the point where we don't see the bigger picture? Or are we really doing everything that we can to expand our scope and to expand our horizon and to have our zeal before the Lord?

What I notice in the course of Christian ministry, in the course of a variety of different efforts being made on different fronts to try to advance the kingdom of God, is that there isn't much in the way of meaningful cooperation. In fact, there's rather internal competition and division, often along lines that are really quite. juvenile and in many cases unimportant. And people are zealous. People are extremely zealous. But the question is, what are they zealous for? Are they zealous for the sake of an honor of the honor of a particular religious leader? Are they zealous for the sake of a denomination? Are they zealous for the sake of a particular ministry? Are they zealous for the sake of a particular cause? In many cases, is it seems to be the case that, yes, this is true. Some people will defend arduously a pastor or an individual church. Other people will defend arduously a denomination or a religious system. Other people

will defend arduously a particular ministry. Other people will defend a particular cause. And people have a tendency to focus their entire efforts and their entire approach and all of their strength and all of their time and all of their resources to defending or attacking at these particular levels. There are some people who dedicate their entire time to exposing individual churches or battling against a particular denomination that they find to be at best willfully misguided. people and at worst to be heretical. There are some people who spend their entire time trying to tear down the ministries of others because they're doing things in a different way that they perceive as wrong because it's

outside the model of what they have known. It's outside the model of what they have been familiar with. And there are other people who say that all of our resources should be dedicated to one particular one particular cause because if we could just figure this thing out, if we could just make progress over here, then everything else would take care of itself. And the point that I'm trying to get at here, without talking about specific examples, because we're all familiar with the kinds of dialogues that go on, and that's not the point. The point is that we need to have a broader perspective so that we can make sure that our zeal is rightly focused. Why? Well,

for one, we have to understand the way that the body of Christ is supposed to work. We are not all supposed to be in one area or the other. God has given each and every one of us specific giftings and specific callings to be in particular places at particular times. And as we are seeking the Lord, as we are going into scripture and obeying those precepts, and as we are listening and attentive to the Holy Spirit, he is going to guide us specifically into the work. And to the works that have been prepared for us to accomplish since before the foundation of the earth. Please don't feel like you are, you're missing out on something because someone has a ministry going over here and you're not a part of it.

Please know that the primary measuring point, the way that we will be assessed is, are we being and have we been and will we be obedient to the call of God that is personalized and specific on our lives. And of course, this doesn't mean that God is going to call us into something so specific in niche that actually goes against the tenets of scripture, something that's way out there running contra to other things that the Lord is trying to do. Everything is working together in obedience with the Lord in this fantastic, symphonic nature of people pulling on different different threads and identifying different causes and deploying their gifts in different ways. The body of Christ is on one hand entirely centralized because it has Christ as the head and there is

no other leadership. It's a flat structure underneath that. Anything that is different is going to be because of the way that people set things up for the purpose of, running organizations or efficiency or just because that's the way that we like to do things. That's the natural order, quote unquote. But the body of Christ in genuine status is Jesus over, overall, and then everyone else at the same level underneath him. It is not this, it's not this pyramid scheme of, okay, well, I need to graduate to this next level. I need to go up and influence, et cetera, et cetera. If we see those kind of things, even as they exist in the world, we understand that, okay, if there is going to be a local assembly of believers, a body of

Christ, people are playing different roles and some people have been appointed to be pastors and in positions of leadership. But those people are not above in the spiritual hierarchy. The layperson, quote unquote. And, you know, even that distinction between the lay person and the ministerial class is absolutely it's a fraud is what I'm trying to say. It doesn't accurately represent the situation in the way that the body of Christ is supposed to be representing itself.

There definitely do need to be people in different positions, some of whom have authority over others for the purpose of continuity and leadership, etc. However, the structure ultimately is completely flat. It is centralized in that it is under one ruler, under one. head under one person, namely Jesus Christ, God, our Lord and Savior. But apart from that, it is decentralized. We each individually, in collection with other believers, need to be following the will of God for our own lives. And those decisions, those callings, those giftings that we have, they are not perfectly independent of one another. They are going to come

into alignment more closely with certain people, we need to rely on counsel, it doesn't mean that each one of us is totally isolated. Remember, decentralized does not mean isolated here. And so when we have a particular zeal, we need to avoid establishing the kind of groupings in the body in the body of Christ that would take us away from the bigger picture. Here, Joshua gets confronted and pushed back on by Moses saying, well, are you, are you zealous for me? If we, if we would draw the analogy to, to the body of Christ with Jesus is the head, if you are, if you are part of a particular, a particular component, you know, should you be, should you be zealous for the arm? Should you be zealous for the I? Maybe, maybe you feel like you're, um, you're intended to be totally,

totally isolated and alone. You're zealous for yourself. Are you, you, maybe you feel like you're, you zealous for the for the circulatory system? Are you zealous for the operation of the hippocampus here? Like what's really going on? Where is our focus? And if our focus and our zeal is not on the body of Christ writ large with this proper theological understanding of the structure of the body of Christ and how we are meant to be pushing ahead together and encouraging one another and lifting one another up and moving everyone forward, then we are going to end up in the circumstance that we have been, where we are going to end up passing down to the next generation, the same kind of divisions that have despoiled the body of Christ for so many years and decades. The same kind

of eschatology and the conflict there. Like, are you more zealous for, you more zealous for, your position on the timing of the rapture, then you are for the body of Christ writ large. And for many people, even if they're stuck in that trap, let's say, that trap of overly myopic zeal here, they would say, well, no, I'm zealous for the body of Christ, and that's why I focus so much on this particular issue. And for certain people, if that's what they are called to do precisely by the Holy Spirit, then I'm not here. here to stand in judgment of someone being obedient to the will of God in their lives. That is clearly what we have to do. However, I have my suspicions that whatever side of whatever issue you

want, or whether you're focused on a particular denomination, or whether you're focused on a particular cause, let's say the distinction between people who are abolitionists with respect to abortion versus people who are fine with more incremental kind of progress. Like if we are, or let's say, the crowd whose primary focus is on the Second Amendment versus other things. And so people are, by definition, going to have their own areas of expertise and specialty based on the experience that they have had throughout the course of their lives and the giftings that the Lord has provided them with. However, we can't lose sight of the bigger picture.

And what I would encourage everyone here to do today is to ask, is to ask themselves the question that Moses asked, Ashua in slightly different in slightly different terms because people wouldn't necessarily be zealous for Moses, although that's another, that's another situation that can arise. But what are you zealous for? Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where your zeal is placed. Because if our zeal is placed in too narrow a focus, let's say we get really concerned about people using a particular set of words, a set of vocabulary. And it's something that we just harp on over and over and over again. Even if it's a legitimate point, even if it's an important consideration, the question is,

where is our zeal ultimately? There is nothing wrong with identifying a particular problem or a trap or a component or that is limiting the body of Christ and saying, hey, hey, everyone, this is a particular bondage that we need to seek the Lord on to get free of. But when it goes too far, when it becomes too narrow, when our focus goes from the full counsel of God, understanding the big picture, understanding the structure of the body of Christ and it goes to something narrow where now I'm defending my own my own denomination exclusively or my job is now to defend against attacks on the the church or the body I belong to as opposed to

or even you know handing out attacks on on other on other churches on other approaches here so it's a it's a nuanced point that we're trying to make but it boils down to ask yourself and going to the Lord with a specific question. Where is your zeal placed? And you will know because of the amount of time that you spend on things. And then you have to ask yourself a secondary question. Well, if I'm spending a lot of time in this particular issue, answering this particular question,

battling against this particular challenge, why am I doing it? why am I doing these things and spending my time the way that I am? And this is just all part of an ongoing checkup that we need to be having in this moment, in particular this moment because it's critical. Because if we have misplaced zeal in this generation and we teach that to the next generation, then we are going to miss out on a harvest. If we don't have Moses correcting Joshua,

Joshua has picked up some, let's say, parochial religion in this moment. He is demonstrating his unfamiliarity with people other than Moses being able to have this relationship, this direct relationship with the Spirit of God. And so we, in our generation, can't be putting people in a position where they end up quenching the Spirit. If we, as people inside of Christian denominations, if the Baptists stay here and their focus is on discipling Baptists and the Pentecostals are discipling Pentecostals and the Methodists or discipling Methodists, et cetera, and the Catholics are, if we are more zealous for our denomination than we are for the body of Christ writ large, then we are going to have a problem. If we pass on and perpetuate the divisions and the quarrels and the unnecessary, the unnecessary discrepancies in doctrine, if we aren't able to accomplish this unification, then there's going to be sincere difficulties. Now, this isn't to say that you can force unification either through unnecessary conformity or by opening things up so broad. broadly that, you know, everyone is now included under the tent. There are certain core beliefs that are, you know, that can't be compromised on. But when we establish these subsidiary and

inferior hierarchical structures that don't adequately represent the body of Christ writ large, then we run into difficulties. And if we as a generation of Christians, if I now, as as a father to my, to my brand new daughter, if I pass on to her a zeal for, a zeal for Times Square Church where my wife and I attend, or I pass on a zeal for teaching that is the gift that the Lord has given me, or if I pass on a zeal for some particular political issue, or if I pass on some zeal for a particular eschatological system, if I pass on these things, And then my daughter, God forbid, becomes zealous for the sake of what I care about, rather than zealous for the sake of what the Lord cares about for her life, then I have done

her a tremendous disservice. And this is a challenge because we want the next generation to follow in our footsteps. And that creates a blind spot where if we determine that our footsteps are the nature of the walk that people need to be living out. If we become the measure of the next generation, then how can we expect the next generation to supersede, to overcome, to go beyond where we have been, to go deeper into the things of God? And shouldn't that be the goal? Are we really going to say that we are the pinnacle with all the failures that the body of Christ is endlessly reproduced in this generation? Endless, endless litanys of failure. And ultimately what's happened is that we haven't even bothered to raise up our children in the way that they should go because of our profound, and I'm generalizing here, of course, lack of understanding, lack of appreciation and the lack of depth of faith that we have.

And so if we pass on this half-hearted zeal, then clearly that is going to evaporate. But we can also go too far in the other direction. Because right now I'm speaking to people who sincerely care about the Lord, sincerely care about seeing his will done in their lives and who want a harvest for the kingdom in this generation. And one of the profound obstacles to that is when we become divided parochially for no good reason other than, well, that's just the way that we do things. And so we're zealous about the way that we do things. Why? Because we assume that we're right. Why? Because that's easier than assuming we're wrong and it's more comfortable. And we can't really live in a situation where we assume that we're wrong all the time. But we need to get closer to that. We need to get closer to the point where we say, I need to make sure that on an ongoing basis that there aren't any sacred cows in my life, that there isn't any misplaced zeal, that I'm not focused on the wrong thing, that I'm not looking too narrowly where the Lord wants me to look more broadly. I need to follow every day of my life the will that the Lord establishes for me. And I get that from scripture. I get that

from pressing in in prayer. I get that from listening to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. I get that from paying close attention to my own motivations as best I can. I get that from sincere, godly, scriptural counsel from different people who can help me reflect on my own decisions and who can point me in the right path, who can say to me, like Moses said to Joshua, what are you really zealous for? And ultimately, we just need to be able to articulate these things, because if we can't articulate where our zeal is, then the next generation is not going to respond in the way that they should. We can't browbeat people into particular beliefs. And if we are zealous about something and we don't have good reasons and we don't understand the other arguments that come

into play, then we are going to be hard pressed to pass along that zeal apart from simply hammering it into people in a way that is not productive, in a way that makes them ultimately weak. They could have a zeal for something, but when the zeal is sincerely challenged, when their passion for a particular issue is challenged in a sophisticated way, they won't be ready to respond to it. Because we didn't pass along this broader passion for the body of Christ, this broader zeal for the kingdom of God, supported by argument, evidence, reasoning, the word of God, this full-fledged foundation. of faith built upon Christ, built upon Jesus, in proper understanding. That is what needs to be established and what needs to be passed on, not some particular creed from a denomination,

not some particular focus of traditions from a particular ethnic group, not some sort of approach to prophecy that points people in particular directions. All these things have their own place and are going to have some value to them. But if our zeal is misplaced, if our zeal is focused on these narrow issues and we don't have a sense of the broader picture, if we don't have an engagement with the bigger ideas, if we don't have a reason for the hope that is in us, if it just comes down to these silos of activity, these bastions of institutional tradition, just the way that things are, then that's not going to be successfully passed on. And we're going to end up producing not the Joshua's who gave a good report, who had faith in the Lord, who went into

the land, who understood the bigger picture of the calling on their lives, who knew the purposes of the kingdom of God, who met with Jesus, who went forth and conquered, who destroyed the works of the enemy because of their faith and because of their leadership. Instead, we're just going to have a bunch of people milling about, not communicating with one another, casting doubts and aspersions onto different members of the body of Christ, we're going to have the liver fighting against the knee, we're going to have the toe fighting against the shoulder, we're going to have in fighting the likes of which we have seen in this generation and likely even more severe. So it is time, brothers and sisters, for us to establish this firm foundation, this solid form,

Note that this problem, this issue was not necessarily, not necessarily just restricted to the Israelites in the desert, in the wilderness. The same thing occurs in Jesus' ministry. This is after the Mount of Transfiguration in Mark 9, starting at verse 38 and going to verse 40, take heed of what Jesus is saying here. John answered him, saying, teacher, we saw someone. who does not follow us, casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us. But Jesus said, do not forbid him. For no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterwards speak evil of me. For he who is not against us is on our side. What was John's problem? John's problem was that he saw people who were not following the disciples. Now, in today's day and

age, we, you know, we would look over at someone who's not of our denomination, not of our, not of our background, not of our particular eschatology, et cetera, et cetera. And we would say, well, you know, these people are deficient. They don't believe exactly what they, what we believe. And so they're undermining the work that we are trying to do. What did Jesus say? Do not forbid him. If you see, if you see people who are doing, who are doing these things, who are doing these things and working the works of God and being obedient to the will of God in their life. Don't forbid them. Jesus says, for no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterwards speak evil of me.

It says, for he who is not against us is on our side. Now, of course, we do have to understand that there are people, and Scripture tells us about this extensively as well, people who claim to be on the side of Christ, but whose zeal is for the world, whose zeal is for the enemy, who zeal is for themselves. Those are people who Jesus is not talking about here because they are legitimately against the people of Christ. They're legitimately against God and against His kingdom. But I'm making a different point. I'm making the point that we need to understand that just because someone is not exactly the same of us as us in all these different dimensions, our zeal has to be for the kingdom of God in such a

way that it allows us to be fine with people who are being obedient in their own lane, people who are being obedient according to what Jesus has told them to do. Now, there are plenty of situations where people aren't being obedient, and that's a different challenge in it of itself. But one of the problems that I see in the, in people who would label themselves the remnant body of Jesus Christ, is this profound, rush to be zealous in such a way that is short-sighted. And if that approach, if that nature gets passed along to the next generation, then God

help us because we are going to be missing out on an incredible harvest that will happen when we follow the teachings of Jesus, demonstrate the love that he called for us to have specifically so that it would stand as a testimony in the world of the way that the way that people have been transformed supernaturally by the work of the Lord in our lives, so that we can't have our zeal for God overridden by our zeal for something smaller. That's the end point. The kingdom of God, the name of Jesus, the worthiness of our Lord, all of these things are proper.

We should have zeal for them. But all too often, whether it's a particular focus on some doctrine, a particular focus on a particularly, let's say a conspiratorial version of interpretation of scripture, people get these pet things, these pet causes, these pet ideas, these pet theories that they begin to have zeal for. And that is where they draw those battle lines. Okay. If you care more about the age and shape of the earth, if you care more about the timing of the rapture, if you care more about your denomination, if you care more about the alien question, if you care more about any of these things than the kingdom of God writ large as demonstrated by the time that you are spending in different activities and as demonstrated by

where you put your primary efforts, then there's a sincere problem because what we can do is we can end up making disciples, but making disciples inside of the myopic zeal that we have. It's an incredibly nuanced thing because everyone does have particular areas of expertise that they focus on. but if we lose the forest for the trees, if we misplace our zeal, then we can fall into this subtle trap that materially undermines what we are trying to accomplish in this generation and what the Lord wants to accomplish in this generation. So let's boil it down to a thesis. And the thesis comes from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse one. Paul writes, imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. What happens too much today, to boil this down, is that people will just say, imitate me. Imitate me as I take up arms against

this faction that I believe is in the wrong. Imitate me as I prioritize the hierarchical, work of my denomination over everything else. I imitate me as I pursue this particular political cause in the way that I feel like I'm supposed to pursue it. I imitate me as I prevent other people from pursuing the same outcomes but just using different tactics. I imitate me as I care exclusively about this one thing, particularly doctrines that have biblical basis but that most people are not aware of in the mainstream church so that it

makes me feel like I have secret, occult knowledge, you know, hidden knowledge about these things. I imitate me as I go about my business as I do all of these things. We should imitate people to the extent that they are imitating Christ. Paul says, imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. If we are not imitating Christ, if we are sowing discord, Christ did not sow discord among the brethren. He established a line of demarcation that created great conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. But Christ is not sowing discord among the brethren. Christ is not divided.

Christ is not going about castigating people, going about destroying and calling fire down on people, just because they don't do things exactly the way that you do. There are core doctrines that we need to defend. But inside of the remnant, it seems that we are zealous for the particulars in an unnecessary way. It causes us to lose focus. It causes us to lose the ability to coordinate. And it causes us the ability to or it causes us to sacrifice good and proper fellowship for the sake of some pittances, ultimately. We are not imitrating Christ, brothers and sisters, when we all get together and we all say,

yeah, we all believe the same core things about Jesus, but now let's get into huge fights about all this other stuff. Let's abandon that zeal. It doesn't mean that we should get rid of our zeal entirely. It means that we need to coordinate our zeal at the correct level, at the correct level of discipling the next generation to have zeal for the kingdom of God to pursue what the Lord gives them to do, go forth and to prosper and to make disciples of all nations. We have a great commission to fulfill and we're arguing about whether or not giants are going to come back up onto the earth. If they are, they are. If not, not. Do we need to spread the word about different biblical doctrines? Absolutely. But our zeal is towards that. If our zeal is towards any of these things,

as opposed to the bigger picture of the kingdom of God, then we've made a mistake and we can end up not correcting and discipling the Joshua's of this generation correctly. And if we do it correctly, we will cause leaders to rise up and God will be able to speak to them. And that is where the harvest is going to come from. The torch is being passed in this generation at this time. And it's incredibly important that it is passed properly, that it isn't one torch passing from one person to a particular disciple inside of each one of these parochial lanes.

We can't afford to do that anymore. The model has to change. It has to go back to the Book of Acts, which everyone calls for, but seemingly no one wants to actually model. And it has to go back to imitating people as they imitate Christ. We have to find and look and learn and see and grab and identify how all of the different people are imitating Christ as best they can. and we have to discard based on our own assessment the ways in which people are not following Christ appropriately. Take the good, leave the bad, and put it all together through the lens of scripture, and then obey personally the directives that the Lord gives you. It pains me and concerns me that the remnant's zeal is towards the smaller things rather than towards the bigger picture.

we need to change that perspective. We need to change the focus, change the Zoom, change the perspective that we have on where the most important things lie, particularly for the sake of the next generation, particularly for the sake of those who are still wandering lost in this world without hope. Look at the statistics about the perception of meaninglessness, the rates of suicide and depression and anxiety and all of these things and ask yourself, does God deserve a harvest? Is the harvest ripe? Where are his laborers? Where are those who will rise out of the petty squabblings and who will develop into the kind of believers who will disciple properly, who will

display the workings of Christ and who will have the zeal at the highest level for the advancement of the kingdom of God, even if it comes through people who are doing things differently than you are, even if it comes through people who are pursuing different tactics, even if it comes through people who you don't deem to be worthy, even if it comes through Kanye West, where is your zeal? Where is your zeal? Remember, what I'm going to tell my daughter is this, again, from 1st Corinthians 11, I'm going to tell her to imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. Father, give us the grace to understand this. Give us the grace and the discernment to know what you would have us to do in this generation.

Give us the courage to toss aside our zeal for the minor things and to reframe it into a zeal for your kingdom writ large. give us the humility to understand that we don't have all of the pieces of the puzzle. Give us the mercy that we need and the forgiveness that we need so that we can come together to unify with our brothers and sisters, all of whom are like-minded in the major doctrines so that we can be more effective. Forgive us for falling short. Forgive us for not living up to the imitation of you that you.

you are empowering us to do through your Holy Spirit. Give us the power and the courage and the authority to be transformed, transform our hearts and transform our minds so that we can disciple in this day effectively so that we can create this structure of decentralized command so that we can raise up disciples and labors for your harvest. Now is the generation, Lord, where you will be glorified. We love you, Jesus. We thank you. Cause us to see you and you alone. Reframe our perspective to glorify your name forevermore. In Jesus' name, amen.