Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost
September 27, 2026
Preached by Noah Gwinn
Discussion Questions
Noah said that “our comfort and complacency cause us to resist the leading hand of God… [while] our discontentment causes us to resist the staying hand of God.” Which of those two tendencies do you recognize more in yourself?
What is one area of your life where you regularly think, “I’ll be content when…”? What does that reveal about where you're looking for satisfaction?
What is something in your life right now that you wish God would change, move, or speed up? What makes it difficult to be content while you wait?
The sermon emphasized that God is not just willing to be near his people—he is eager to dwell with them. Do you think of God as eager to be close to you? Why or why not?
Where are you most tempted to take back control of the “itinerary” of your life? Think about your career, relationships, finances, family, location, schedule, or future. What would it look like to actually surrender that area to God?
Noah offered five ways we can pay attention to God's leading: Word, prayer, Spirit, community, and providence. Which of these come(s) most naturally to you? Which one(s) do you tend to neglect?
Can you share about a time when you believe God was leading you somewhere—or asking you to stay somewhere—even though it wasn't what you would have chosen for yourself? Looking back, what did you learn about God through that experience?
If you really believed, right now, that God is both with you and leading you, what would change about the way you live this week? Is there one specific thing you need to stop controlling, start doing, or patiently wait for?
Scripture Reading
Numbers 9:15-23
15 On the day that the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony. And at evening it was over the tabernacle like the appearance of fire until morning. 16 So it was always: the cloud covered it by day and the appearance of fire by night. 17 And whenever the cloud lifted from over the tent, after that the people of Israel set out, and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the people of Israel camped. 18 At the command of the Lord the people of Israel set out, and at the command of the Lord they camped. As long as the cloud rested over the tabernacle, they remained in camp. 19 Even when the cloud continued over the tabernacle many days, the people of Israel kept the charge of the Lord and did not set out. 20 Sometimes the cloud was a few days over the tabernacle, and according to the command of the Lord they remained in camp; then according to the command of the Lord they set out. 21 And sometimes the cloud remained from evening until morning. And when the cloud lifted in the morning, they set out, or if it continued for a day and a night, when the cloud lifted they set out. 22 Whether it was two days, or a month, or a longer time, that the cloud continued over the tabernacle, abiding there, the people of Israel remained in camp and did not set out, but when it lifted they set out. 23 At the command of the Lord they camped, and at the command of the Lord they set out. They kept the charge of the Lord, at the command of the Lord by Moses.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that there are two types of people in this world: visionaries and realists. People who feel that their main goal in life is to dream big and people who feel that their main goal in life is to remind the dreamers that there are bills to pay and mouths to feed. The other thing I am becoming increasingly convinced of is that somehow in the providence of God, it seems to always work out that these people get married to each other. Which is both a profound blessing and mildly infuriating for both parties.
But one thing that we all have in common, dreamers and realists alike, is our propensity to become discontent with the life we have been given. Dreamers will always feel too tied down. Realists will always feel like there is a stability others have that they can’t quite grasp. I’m not sure where you are on the dreamer-realist spectrum, but wherever you find yourself, our passage today has a lot to say about how you can find contentment wherever you are, in whatever season you’re in. Let’s pray and ask the Lord to show us how to be content.
Heavenly Father…
INTRODUCTION
Today is week three in our sermon series through the book of Numbers that we’re calling “Contentment in the Wilderness.” The reason that we’re preaching this series through this book is because although the events of this book happened thousands of years ago, the people of God here illustrate something awfully contemporary. What I mean is that, in between their salvation from slavery and their arrival in the promised land were 40 years of wandering through arid desert wilderness. That’s 40 years of high potential for discontentment and disappointment. And like the people of God in Numbers, we too have been set free from slavery and are on our way to the promised land. But in between are years–decades–of wandering through what can feel like wilderness. So, for thousands of years, Numbers has been an oasis in this wilderness to say, “here’s your source of contentment. Learn from the trials and triumphs of those who have gone before you.” And we want to learn from those trials and triumphs.
At the same time, however, is the reality that many of us have gotten a little too cozy in this wilderness. For many, particularly in America, particularly among middle class families, we can forget that we are in a wilderness because many of us are, frankly, pretty comfortable with the life we live. When this is the case, our comfort and complacency cause us to resist the leading hand of God in our lives, and our discontentment causes us to resist the staying hand of God in our lives. The Lord wants to take us to the promised land, but we have far too often created our own itinerary, with our own timeline and our own travel stops.
So, into this context, for all of us–dreamers and realists alike—Numbers 9 is here to show us an important truth. This passage will show us that when the Lord breaks into our itinerary with his own travel plans, his presence is the stabilizing force of contentment that we need when our lives look different than we might want.
We’ll break up our passage into two points this morning. First, we’ll learn contentment as we see that God is eager to dwell with his people, and then we’ll learn contentment as we see that God is eager to lead his people.
GOD IS EAGER TO DWELL WITH HIS PEOPLE
First, we’ll see that God is eager to dwell with his people. Look with me at verses 15-16.
15 On the day that the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony. And at evening it was over the tabernacle like the appearance of fire until morning. 16 So it was always: the cloud covered it by day and the appearance of fire by night.
Growing up, my brother and I loved Christmas morning. We would get up way too early, burst into our parents’ room, and demand that they get up immediately so that we could begin opening the Christmas presents. Eventually they started locking the door on Christmas morning. So eventually we just learned to pick the lock.
In this passage, we are given a picture of God that almost looks like a kid on Christmas morning, ready to burst into the room to be with his people. But to really see this, we need to answer two questions: what is the tabernacle? and what’s up with this cloud?
The tabernacle was a beautiful, intricately designed tent that God instructed his people to build in the wilderness. It was the place where he would dwell among them and meet with Moses, the leader of his people. It was also the place where atonement was made for the sins of the people by making sacrifices to God. We can think of the tabernacle as something of a portable temple for the people of God as they wandered throughout the wilderness. It was at the center of their camp, which represented what was to be true of them – that God would be at the center of all they did. That their lives would revolve around him in every way.
So that’s the tabernacle, but what’s going on with this cloud that’s mentioned all throughout this passage? Well, this isn’t the first time we see this cloud in the Bible. You don’t have to turn there, but in Exodus 13, as Israel is being freed from slavery leaving Egypt, we read, “21 And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. (Ex. 13:21)” Did you catch that? The Lord was in the cloud and in the fire. The cloud and fire are to be a visible representation of the presence of the Lord with his people. He’s in the cloud!
Okay, so let’s back up. Why did I say that our passage gives us a picture of God that almost looks like a kid on Christmas morning? Look back at verse 15. “On the day that the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the tabernacle.” When did the cloud cover the tabernacle? On the day it was set up! It’s as if God is on the edge of his seat waiting for this tent to get set up so that–BOOM–he can dwell with his people. The visible presence of God covering the place where he has promised to be. Do you see just how eager God is to be among his people?
Is that your view of God? If I asked you, “do you think God is eager to be close to you?” what would you say? “Well sure,” you might say, “when I’m being obedient, God might be willing to get close to me. Maybe when I’m at church. Maybe when my life is put together.” But look at the next verse. Verse 16: “So it was always: the cloud covered [the tabernacle] by day and the appearance of fire by night.” So it was always. Spoiler alert: very shortly we will start preaching passages from the book of Numbers that show that the people of God are very often disobedient, disrespectful, and defiant. They are often a rebellious people. And yet our passage says, “so it was always.” Church, when the people of Israel were being rebellious in the wilderness, the Lord did not take his presence away from them. When they struggled to parent their kids in godly ways… when they caved under their lust… when their church attendance was closer to the bottom of their priority list than to the top… when they envied their neighbor’s car or house or job, the Lord did not remove the cloud from his people.
Friends, the Bible does not present us with a picture of a God who sees you in your sin and shrinks back or runs away from you, the Bible presents us with a picture of a God who draws near to us in the midst of our brokenness. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t take sin seriously, he does. But it does mean that he doesn’t ask us to try to clean ourselves up before he will get close to us.
If you are in Christ, you need to know that God is eager to be close to you. You need to know that the very same presence that dwelt among the people of God in this cloud is the very same presence that you have now dwelling inside of you. He has drawn even closer to you, in all of your sin and suffering, than he ever did to his people in Numbers.
Do you see how the Lord’s eagerness to dwell with his people can lead us to greater contentment? When Pastor Ron began this sermon series a few weeks ago, he defined contentment as this: in every circumstance of life, “finding our satisfaction in the God who is satisfied in himself.” We don’t need to convince God to come be with us. By his spirit, he already is. And that means that you and I already have the source of true contentment with us at all times. It’s as if any time we were hungry, we had a full feast in our back pocket. Or any time we were thirsty, we had an ice-cold Gatorade already in our hand. Christian, God himself, who can obliterate your discontentment, is always with you, and eagerly desires to be close to you. To paraphrase the Psalmist, surely the goodness and mercy of the Lord will hunt you down all the days of your life.
GOD IS EAGER TO LEAD HIS PEOPLE
We just saw that God is eager to dwell with his people, now we’ll see how God is eager to lead his people.
The story goes that former U.S. Senator Dwight Morrow was boarding a train leaving New York City when he realized he didn’t have his railroad ticket. He quickly became anxious, searching his pockets and things for his lost ticket. The conductor standing beside him saw what was going on and said, “Don’t worry about it, Mr. Morrow. We know you had a ticket. Just mail it to the railroad when you find it.” “That’s not what’s troubling me,” replied Morrow, “I need to find it to know where I’m going.”
I have to imagine that many times, the people of God in their wilderness wanderings felt like Senator Morrow. They knew that God had a promised land waiting for them, but they also knew that he had to be the one to lead them there. They had a ticket but didn’t have a clue where they were going. And yet, as they say, not all those who wander are lost. Although the people of Israel were wandering, they had a guide. Because not only was the pillar of cloud and fire their constant, never ceasing reminder of the presence of God with them, it was also their wayfinder. The pillar of cloud by day and fire by night were blazing a trail for them through the desert to take them where they needed to go.
But the author of Numbers is not content to just say, “the people of God followed his leading.” Instead, hear the repetitiveness. Look with me starting in verse 17, and we’ll read all the way to verse 23:
17 And whenever the cloud lifted from over the tent, after that the people of Israel set out, and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the people of Israel camped. 18 At the command of the Lord the people of Israel set out, and at the command of the Lord they camped. As long as the cloud rested over the tabernacle, they remained in camp. 19 Even when the cloud continued over the tabernacle many days, the people of Israel kept the charge of the Lord and did not set out. 20 Sometimes the cloud was a few days over the tabernacle, and according to the command of the Lord they remained in camp; then according to the command of the Lord they set out. 21 And sometimes the cloud remained from evening until morning. And when the cloud lifted in the morning, they set out, or if it continued for a day and a night, when the cloud lifted they set out. 22 Whether it was two days, or a month, or a longer time, that the cloud continued over the tabernacle, abiding there, the people of Israel remained in camp and did not set out, but when it lifted they set out. 23 At the command of the Lord they camped, and at the command of the Lord they set out. They kept the charge of the Lord, at the command of the Lord by Moses.
Basically, these verses are telling us that when God moved, the people moved, and when God stopped, the people stopped. But it takes seven very repetitive verses to say that simple fact. Why? So that we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was God’s itinerary, not the people’s. It didn’t matter if they had only settled for a few hours or a few months, God told them when to move and when to stop. It was very clear that there was one master navigator. In fact, the phrase, “at the command of the Lord” is used seven times just in verses 18-23. In other words, there were no Israelite travel agents for this particular trip. This was God forging a path through the desert for them.
Imagine how often the temptation to be discontent was crouching at the door. Like, think back to last week’s passage. We learned that there are hundreds of thousands of people traveling together. Thousands of families with young children and elderly grandparents. You’re walking around in the desert for hours and hours, and then finally the pillar comes to a stop. You breathe a sigh of relief, and start to set up camp. The sun sets, you make your way to your tent, sore from all the walking, hot from the desert sun, and you don’t know if you’re going to get more than one night’s sleep in this spot. If you’ve ever taken kids to the beach, you have a sense of some of this. Sometimes it feels like just as you finish getting set up, it’s time to pack up to go. Others of you who care for elderly loved ones feel this same thing. This was their daily grind for forty years.
How many times would you be tempted to grumble? How many times would you be tempted to ask, “are we there yet?” Not in a corny way, but in an exhausted, frustrated way. How long would it take you to stop being amazed that the visible presence of God is among you and visibly leading you on your journey? How long has it taken you to stop being amazed that by his Spirit, God dwells in you right now if you are in Christ?
So with all that in mind, how in the world can we say that this passage can actually stir our contentment rather than our discontentment? Like when we think about God being eager to lead us, that sounds great on paper and all, but in practice it might actually feel more unsettling and hard and frustrating than we might want to admit.
Well, I think our contentment is stirred when we remember glorious things that we have far too easily forgotten. When we feel discontent or unamazed by something like the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us, it shows us that we desperately need to be reenchanted by the glory that has become normal. Like take a step back for a second and just consider: Christian, you have been handcrafted and formed by God in your mother’s womb! God has called you into relationship with himself before you could do anything to impress or offend him! Your sin has been nailed to the cross of Jesus and buried in his tomb where it cannot have the final word over your life anymore! You have a reserved seat with a table setting for you at the marriage supper of the Lamb! Jesus is returning for you and is eager to spend the rest of eternity with his bride… which means you! And Christian, this passage tells us another glorious truth that we have far too easily forgotten–the same God who was eager to lead his people through the wilderness is eager to lead us through our wilderness today!
“Well, that sounds great,” you might say. “But they had a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire that they could visibly see. I can’t see God, so how do I know whether he is leading me at all today? And if so, how in the world do I know where he is leading me?” This is a fair question. I want to suggest five places to attend to to see God’s leading and staying hand: Word, Prayer, Spirit, Community, and Providence. We’ll take these one at a time. Just fair warning, this will be a bunch of information, but I hear some version of this question all the time, so I’m hopeful it will be helpful to you if you’ve had a similar question. But to reiterate, God leads us through his Word, Prayer, Spirit, Community, and Providence.
First and most importantly, we should look for God to lead us through his Word. We know that God speaks across time and cultures through his written Word, so we should expect that he has something particular to say to us every time we open up our Bible. Now, does that mean that every time you open up the Scriptures, it’s guaranteed to be a message specifically for you telling you to buy a house or marry someone specific or move across the country? No, of course not. But at a foundational level we should expect that by his Spirit, God will speak to our hearts to lead us through his Word. I’ll give you an example of what this could look like.
Maybe, for example, your Bible reading plan has you reading a passage about Jesus having compassion on the lost and how “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” and so we should pray earnestly to the Lord to send out laborers into his harvest. Maybe you get to the end of that passage, and as you’re meditating on the Word you realize that you have a burden for a particular area of the world or a particular people group. You suddenly experience this compassion that Jesus experienced. And over time the burden grows; it doesn’t go away. What’s happening there? Is that an accident? It may be that God is trying to get ahold of you. Maybe he just wants you to begin praying earnestly for that place or people, so you begin to pray that the Lord would send laborers into his harvest.
And this takes us to the next way we see God lead us. We said we look for God to lead us by speaking through his Word. But second, we should expect that God will lead us through prayer. Just as God can and does stir things in our hearts as we earnestly seek him in his Word, he can and does stir things in our hearts as we pray. To return to our example we were just running with, you’re praying for laborers to be sent to the harvest field that you are burdened for and perhaps you start to think, “maybe God is inviting me to go and actually be a laborer.” Friends, kind of as an aside, God is in the business of raising up missionaries to go and spread the gospel around the world. In fact, it is more than likely that you only believe the gospel because somebody went to the nations to share the good news of Jesus. And I am concerned that the subtle hum our comfort and complacency here in middle class America has drowned out the voice of God inviting us to go. Guys, it is not crazy to think that God could send missionaries from our church to other places in the world. I actually think he would love to do that. But I firmly believe that one of our Central PA idols is that our roots go so deep here that it would be unthinkable for us to uproot our lives and families for the sake of the gospel. I would love it if our church found that there were some of us, through seeking the Lord in his Word, that were compelled to take the gospel somewhere else. Are you even open to the possibility that God may be inviting you into just that thing right now? May we be people who would have that kind of openness.
Okay, off my soap box. The point is that it may be that as you pray, you find that a desire bubbles up in your heart that you had no business coming up with. On a smaller scale, maybe as you pray, you randomly have a desire to bless someone with a meal or offer to watch their kids so they can have a date night. Whatever it is, if you are in prayer and experience a desire that aligns with the Word of God, it very well may be a way that God is trying to lead you to follow him.
This leads very neatly into the next thing we should think about when it comes to God’s leading. We are led by God’s Word, prayer, and third, sensitivity to the Spirit of God. Now, this could all sound quite mystical and confusing so let me bring some clarity. You ever have a moment when you’re just going about your daily business, when all of a sudden someone comes to mind and you think, “huh, I should probably pray for that person.” or “I should probably check in with this person.” – have you ever had that? Here’s my question: where do you think that thought is coming from? Like, sometimes we experience what feels like a random prompting to pray for someone, serve someone, or reach out to someone. And while we shouldn't automatically assume every stray thought we have is from the Spirit, we should be willing to seriously consider that God may be leading us when one of these promptings is in line with Scripture and produces godly fruit.
So we are led by God’s Word, prayer, his Spirit, and the next way that we see God lead us is in community. We have been so formed by the culture around us that says that radical individualism is the best path forward. “Don’t let anyone else hold you back,” we are told. “Authority structures and institutions are inherently suspect,” we are told. However, for us as Christians, we belong to one body. And as one body, God uses us to lead one another. Whether through wise counsel, prayer, or discernment, God will often speak through a brother or sister to guide us through our wilderness.
We’vee see that God leads us through his Word, prayer, his Spirit, community, and the last thing I’ll invite you to consider is how God leads us through providence. We must remember that no event of our life is an accident. Where has God brought you thus far? What is the story he is writing with your life? What are the God-given desires that you have for your life, for your family, for your ministry, for your church? What patterns or themes do you see? Looking back on your life and taking an inventory of how he’s worked in the past and what desires he has placed in you are great ways to identify how he may be leading you.
So, God leads us through his Word, through prayer, through his Spirit, through community, and through providence. For each of these things, we need to model the posture of the people of God in Numbers 9. Like I said earlier, we will read on in the chapters to come, and we will see some attitudes and behaviors from these wilderness wanderers that are not admirable and that we should not replicate. But here, in this passage, they have a posture we would do well to model. For example, these people lived with a constant expectation that God was eager to lead them somewhere. There was an expectation that he would show up and that he would move. And this required them to be constantly looking to the cloud.
Almost every year, around this time, I read or listen to the Harry Potter book series. And one of the characters in the books has an iconic line that unfortunately didn’t make it into the movies in the same way it’s featured in the books. In the books, it seems like every other chapter that he’s in, he exclaims, “constant vigilance!” And this is exactly the motto the Israelites needed to live by in the wilderness. They needed constant vigilance, looking to the pillar to see when it moved and when it stopped. And you and I likewise need to have our attention that riveted on the Lord. We need to be constantly vigilant in our Bible reading, our prayer life, our sensitivity to the Spirit of God, in community with one another, and the way God has providentially worked in our lives. We don’t do this to check off some kind of spiritual box, but in order to keep our eyes fixed on the cloud. So that when the cloud moves, we can take the next faithful step in the right direction.
Another posture worth remembering is that you and I are not our own. Last week, Pastor Benjamin referenced a question from the Heidelberg Catechism. I won’t reread the whole thing, but the question asks, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” And the answer begins, “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ…”. Church, a lot of our issues in life could be resolved if we would remember that we are not our own. My life is not mine to command. My time is not mine to determine. Where I live is not mine to dictate. Friends, we have a good master who is eager to lead us. And he is eager to dwell with us. The Israelites recognized that God is the one that owned them, and their lives reflected that. How would your life look different now if you took your hands off the reins of your life and let God into the driver’s seat? How would your schedule look? What would you be doing with the money you earn? Where would you live? Who would you befriend?
Living with these two postures–constant vigilance and a reminder that we are not our own–are part of God’s recipe for contentment for us. Living this way gives us so much opportunity to practice being satisfied in God alone. If you look to your circumstances for contentment, you will be crushed when things don’t go according to plan. If you look for contentment in stability, it would be crushing if God asks you to move. If you look for contentment in dreaming and exploring, you will be crushed when God asks you to stay. But if you find contentment in the Lord alone, you will experience so much freedom because whether he asks you to go or stay, he is with you always, even to the end of the age.
I find this message particularly intriguing during the season of life our church is in right now. It seems that we’re at a point where the cloud might be moving. I want to be careful with my language here because we truly don’t know what the future holds. So much could change over the course of the next three years. But church, whether the Lord is leading us to a new meeting location, or whether we will be in this building for the rest of the life of our church, our contentment cannot be found in the building we inhabit but the God who inhabits and dwells among us.
CONCLUSION
As we close, I just want to ask the question: where do we most clearly see God dwelling with his people? Sure, we see him in the tabernacle. Sure, we see him in the cloud. But neither of these are the full and final revelation of God dwelling with his people.
Hundreds of years after Moses wrote down the events of Numbers 9, another writer of Scripture would come along and write these words:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14).
If you’re not familiar with Scripture, the “Word” that is being talked about here is Jesus. Jesus was in the beginning with God. In fact, Jesus is God. And then come some of the most astounding words ever written: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God put on skin and walked with his people. It’s not obvious in English, but in the original Greek that this was written in, it reads, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” The tabernacle—that dwelling place of God, that place where atonement was made, that place where the cloud that is the presence of God descended—the true and greater tabernacle has come in the person of Jesus Christ.
I mentioned earlier how Jesus died, rose again, and will return, but there are a few details I skipped over. Shortly after his resurrection, Jesus was gathered with his followers, when suddenly he ascended to heaven. He was lifted up before them and disappeared into what? A cloud. Then about a week and a half after Jesus ascended into the clouds, his followers were gathered again when suddenly, the resurrected Jesus poured out his Spirit upon them in tongues of fire. Clouds and fire. Sound familiar? Jesus was making it abundantly clear that even in the midst of the uncertainty and the wilderness that they (and we) face, the clouds and the tongues of fire remind us that he is eager to be with us and eager to guide us.
So here we are, in this wilderness between being set free from slavery and reaching the promised land. But one day, the living Jesus will return and bring the promised land with him. And when he returns, do you remember how his return is described? He will return, coming with the clouds of heaven with eyes like a flame of fire. Church, the living Jesus is a God eager to dwell with you and eager to lead you all the way to the promised land. God is with you. God is leading you. You don't have to control the itinerary. You can find contentment in the wilderness.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father…
