I’ve been reading the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy) during the last month. Right now, I am in Numbers. The Lord is assembling his people and laying out their roles in the community to prepare them for their crossing over into the Promised Land. This morning, I read Numbers 14-17, which could be titled, “Doubling Down on Rebellion.”

In these four chapters, we see the people rebel against the Lord by refusing to enter Canaan, the land promised to them. Then we see them rebelling against God’s punishment for their refusal to trust him to go before them—40 years wandering in the desert—by then trying to enter the land with the Lord. And if this wasn’t enough, leaders of the Levites (the tribe selected to assist the priests) later convinced their tribe that they all deserved to be priests even though the Lord had selected Aaron as the priest among them.

Throughout Israel’s history, they were prone to double down on their rebelliousness. When they asked Samuel for a king to lead them (“like the other nations”), and Samuel tried to warn them of the foolishness of replacing the Lord with a mere man, they doubled down on their desire to have a human king rule over them. When Rehoboam replaced his father Solomon as king, the people came to him to ask for a less oppressive government. He listened to his father’s counselors and rejected their advice. Then he sought out his friends for their opinions. The counselors gave godly advice, but that of his friends was indeed ungodly. Rehoboam doubled down on his own desire to have unquestioned rule over his people. The religious leaders during Jesus’s time on earth were also prone to doubling down on their traditions and lust for power in light of his teachings.

The truth is that doubling down is always a temptation for fallen human beings. Our desires, pride, and arrogance all contribute to this tendency. And in the face of truth, we often continue to insist going a different way. For example, we all know the dangers of the celebrity pastor, the one who becomes famous and is adored by masses of people. So many over the decades—Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, Mark Driscoll, Ravi Zacharias, just to name a few—have been outed for sinful and unethical behavior. Yet so many pastors still hope to gain fame rather than be content with what ministry the Lord has given them.

In my current ministry, the challenge I see is persuading pastors who have doubled down on what they believe is effective church ministry via preaching and programs to reconsider what the Scriptures teach. They don’t teach the goal of Christianity to be church attendance and involvement, but rather discipleship. They don’t teach that the attraction of a church community is found in entertaining preaching, accomplished worship bands, and wonderful facilities. Rather, they teach that the attraction is to be our outstanding love for one another. They don’t teach that the local church is to be the primary spiritual guide of children and teens, but rather their parents.

In my own life, so many times I doubled down on the importance of proclaiming the truth. I called them, “hard truths.” Yet, looking back, I see that sometimes those truths were hard precisely because of the way I expressed them, without gentleness and kindness.

I think we must be alert to things in our lives that really are outside the Lord’s commands and will for our lives. And once discovered to be in error, to have the humility to change for our own sakes and the work of the Kingdom. Rather than doubling down, we need to fall down before our Lord in repentance.

© Jim Musser 2022 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.