Introduction
So we move on in our journey through the Book of Numbers – which, if you’re new to church and are not familiar with that term - the Book of Numbers - you’ll be glad to learn it does not mean the telephone directory.
It is of course the record in the Bible of how God got a stubborn and unbelieving group of people from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land and it explains why it took 40 years to complete an excursion that should have been over in a few weeks.
People often say that life is a journey and so much of this book of Numbers is similar to the business of how we get from (a) to (b) as we travel through our time here on earth.
People use other metaphors to describe human life – have you ever heard it said that life is a roller coaster? When people say that they mean it’s a series of exhilarating highs and depressing lows. Others say that life is like a game - with winners and losers - and when it’s all over, it all goes back in the box. Another famous life metaphor comes in the film Forrest Gump. Life is a… box of chocolates – you never know which one you’re going to get.
In his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren says that one of the most important biblical metaphors for life on earth is that it’s a test. In fact, he says, words like ‘trial’ and ‘testing’ occur over 200 times in the Bible.
Adam and Eve failed their test in the Garden of Eden when God said “You can enjoy all the trees in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” So that’s the one they went for.
Abraham passed his test when God told him to offer his son Isaac.
Noah passed his test when God said to build an ocean liner in a country with little rain, miles from the sea.
David failed his test when he saw Uriah’s wife bathing on an adjacent roof and decided he had to have her and then kill her husband to cover his tracks.
Think of Jacob, having to work ten years to win the hand of Rachel. He could have given up – but he kept going.
Think of Joseph, sold as a slave, falsely accused and unjustly imprisoned. He could have become embittered – but he never did.
Think of Ruth, think of Esther, think of Daniel, all of whom passed their tests with flying colours.
And, of course, think of Jesus, the pioneer of our faith, who supremely passed every test set before him.
· He went 40 days without food in a desert
· he turned down the devil’s offer of fame, fortune and a life of ease
· he never once buckled in three years of goading and provocation by the religious establishment
· he never once felt sorry for himself or wavered from his mission despite
· being deserted by his followers
· betrayed a friend
· falsely accused
· unjustly condemned
· cruelly beaten
· and savagely killed.
Well, the devil looked at Jesus’ lifeless corpse, smiled to himself and said “Get out of that one if you’re the Son of God!” But even then, Jesus walked out of the tomb alive and triumphant, risen and victorious. How good is that?
And so you too are always being tested – practically every day. Why? Because nothing reveals what you are made of like the way you handle the tests in your life and, in fact, all of life is a test.
God watches:
· how you deal with difficult people
· how you cope with problems
· how you manage disappointment
· how you tackle conflict
· how you face illness
· how you handle money
· and even how you bear up under the depressingly bad English weather!”
Praying Down the Promises
Now then, Numbers chapter 13 finds the people of God at a key point in their journey from Egypt to their Promised Land.
They’ve made it out of slavery, thanks to God’s dramatic deliverance.
They’ve received the Commandments, so they know what God likes and how he wants them to live.
They’ve also tasted God’s bounteous supply as we saw last week; bread from heaven every morning and enough quail in a week to never want to see it again. So they know that God provides.
Now it’s time to move on. So they organise a reconnaissance mission to run the rule over this land they are about to enter. Moses chooses one leader from each tribe and he sends them off to have a look.
In our reading, we skipped the names in v4-16 because they are not easy to pronounce, but I want to just press “pause” and look at v16 because it’s worth mentioning.
It says “These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. (Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Joshua).”
Whenever there’s a change of name in the Bible it’s never because someone just thinks it sounds nicer; it usually means something more significant and this is no exception.
The name Hoshea signifies a prayer for salvation and deliverance; it means “Lord, save!” The name Joshua is the Hebrew form of the name Jesus, it’s the same name, and it signifies, not a prayer for salvation, but a promise of salvation; It means “He will save” in answer to that prayer. So this man went from being called “Lord, save!” to “He will save.”
The relationship between your prayers and God delivering on his promises is very close.
There are many promises in God’s word about your life;
· he promises to be with you,
· he promises to sustain you,
· he promises to guide you,
· he promises to protect you,
· he promises to keep you,
· he promises to bless you,
· he promises to provide for your needs…
but all those promises are triggered by prayer. You activate the promises of God in your experience by asking.
That’s why Jesus said “Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33).
Can I just encourage you if you’re waiting on God’s promises – pray them down.
And take encouragement from the story of Robert and Mary Moffat. They worked for 10 years as missionaries in Botswana and in all that time were unable to report a single convert. People began to question the wisdom of continuing.
The thought of leaving their post, however, brought great grief to them. They felt sure that God had called them and they held on to 1 Thessalonians 5.24 which says “He who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” So they stayed on; and the oppressive spiritual darkness rooted in centuries of spiritism and ancestor worship continued to pervade that area.
Then one day a friend from Britain sent word to the Moffats that she wanted to send them a gift and asked them what they would like. Trusting that the Lord would bless their work, Mary Moffat replied, “Send us a communion set.”
The Holy Spirit moved upon the hearts of the villagers, and soon a little group of six converts was gathered to form the first Christian church in that land. The communion set from England was delayed in the mail; but on the day before the very first commemoration of the Lord's super in Botswana it arrived.
Today there are about 1.3 million Christians in Botswana, that is 70% of the population.
So be patient and pray God’s promises down. He who called you is faithful and he will do it. Remember what Smith Wigglesworth once said; “Great testimonies come from great tests, and great triumphs from great trials.”
Spying Out the Land
Back to Numbers 13. In v17-20 Moses tells the spies what to look for. The thing is, God had already told Moses when he met him in the burning bush back in Exodus 3 that it was “a good and spacious land flowing with milk and honey,” meaning it was fertile enough to support grazing cattle and settled enough to have productive beehives – offering an agricultural abundance of both staple food and luxuries.
So Moses knew it was going to be a great destination but he wanted the people to see it for themselves and sample some produce to show them what the future held in store.
But Moses didn’t know then what kind of opposition they would meet, if any. So he also says in v18 and “See… whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many… What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified?” In other words, is it going to be difficult for us to enter the land and take it – or relatively straightforward?
I want you to notice this; God expects you to use your mind, weigh things up and think things through. Moses didn’t just say “Come on you guys, God has told me we’re going to enter the Promised Land, let’s go! You just need faith.”
No, he saw the spiritual wisdom of assessing the situation intelligently. He saw the spiritual value of measuring the scale of the task and weighing up the resources available. There’s nothing worldly about that – it is the way God has wired us.
So the 12 spies go off for 40 days, which in the Bible is often a time of testing, and they take a good look around from the Desert of Zin to Rehob, (which is a bit like saying from Land’s End to John O’Groats – it’s a methodical and detailed scouting mission.
When they get round to going into the land and driving out the people who are already there what can they expect?
I think we just need to open a parenthesis here. Some people feel very uncomfortable about this. In fact, the conquest of Canaan with its battles and bloodshed recorded in the Book of Joshua is one of the things you hear about again and again from atheists in their rejection of the Bible as God’s word.
I confess it is, for me, one of the Bible’s take-a-deep-breath moments whenever I read it. We need to ask: “Why would a God of love command the Israelites to march in to Canaan, put its occupants to the sword and divide up the land so that they themselves could resettle in it?”
As I’ve wrestled with this question over the years, I have come to hold four convictions.
Firstly, while it’s true that the land did not belong to the Israelites - it didn’t belong to the Canaanites and Amorites either. Psalm 24 says “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” He made it, he sustains it and he holds the title deeds to it. Anyone living there is merely a tenant and, as in any tenancy agreement, the landlord has a right to evict in the case of bad behaviour.
Secondly, God is a God of love but he is also a God of justice to whom everyone will one day have to give an account. If God gave me what I really deserve the truth is he’d send me to straight to hell this morning without passing “Go” and without collecting £200. I am culpable for the shocking death of his blameless Son - and so are you. We are without excuse. It’s only because he is also a God of mercy that he stays his hand from giving sinners what they deserve. That’s what’s so amazing about grace.
Thirdly, God showed incredible patience by delaying his just punishment of the Canaanites and Amorites for four centuries. In Genesis 15, long before the Israelites were in Egypt, God said to Abraham “Know for certain that for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there… In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
In other words, God waited 400 years until the wickedness and vice of the inhabitants of Canaan had got so bad that there was no way back.
What was it about the Amorites that justified their obliteration from the face of the earth? Archaeology has uncovered evidence of an evil and degrading society. Their worship cults were sadistic orgies where child sacrifice was widespread. Sexually transmitted diseases were so endemic that any intermarriage with them would have had catastrophic consequences for generations. But God waited for four centuries, giving them time to change. They didn’t. So at the end of that time, when the sin of the Amorites had reached its full measure, God said, “Enough.”
Fourthly, it needs to be said that any form of holy war is absolutely out of the question for followers of Christ. Jesus told Peter to put down his sword when he drew it in the Garden of Gethsemane, cutting off the ear of the High Priest’s servant. He told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world and if it were, his servants would fight. Jesus is the Prince of Peace and inasmuch as people have fought crusades and killed in Jesus’ name, they have disobeyed Christ and denied the Gospel. “Our fight is not against flesh and blood” says the New Testament, “it is against the principalities and powers and against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.”
I hope that just sets our minds at rest when we encounter violent passages in the Old Testament. Close parenthesis.
Anyway, the spies return with a substantial cluster of grapes, as well as figs and pomegranates – sounds like a pretty impressive fruit salad – and they bring with them a detailed report of what they had seen.
Faith – Sharing God’s Perspective on Your Life
The good news first (v27); “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit.”
So everything God said is true. Should they have been surprised?
Then (v28) one crucial word. “But.” So now the bad news. The people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak – giants.”
And then the disagreement; Caleb (v30) says “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”
But the others disagree and spread a bad and exaggerated report. These are the naysaying pessimists you really don’t need too many of on the PCC! Moses has 10 out of 12 on his.
“The land devours those living in it” they say. Does it?
“All the people we saw there are of great size.” All of them? Really?
“We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Grasshoppers eh? Did they actually say, “You people, we’ve never seen humans like you before. Has anyone ever told you look sort of… locusty, like grasshoppers? Because, to us, the resemblance is striking.”
It’s just exaggeration and scaremongering. But they spread it around. We’ll follow this story up next week and we’ll see just how infectious and toxic unbelief is to the morale of God’s people.
I mentioned David earlier – and the Bath Sheba test he famously failed. But what about the Goliath test? How did he do on that one? ‘A star’ with distinction, honours, Academy Award and blue ribbon!
When Goliath faced the Israelites most of them took one look and said something like “We’re grasshoppers compared to this giant.” Only David said “This man has insulted the living God. Big mistake.”
The Israelites said “Well, to be fair he got size on his side.” Only David said, “Yes, but we’ve got God on our side!”
The Israelites said “Wow, he’s enormous! It’s men against boys.” Only David said, “Wow, he’s enormous! With a target that big I can’t miss!”
Ending
So you see, faith is mostly about seeing God’s perspective on our life.
Six American shoe company executives were sent out to do some research into expanding into a country in the Far East. They looked around, conferred, and discussed the potential for overseas investment.
Five said; “There is no market here. Practically everyone goes barefoot.” But one said, “Practically everyone here needs shoes. We should open a factory immediately.”
How big are the challenges you face?
Wondering how you’re going to manage with tight finances? How does God, who owns all wealth and riches, look at your balance sheet?
Wondering how you are going to cope with a major new problem at work? How does God, who is supreme over the affairs of the nations, view your office?
What bad report are you hearing? Who or what are your giants in the land? What challenge are you facing this morning?
Mike Pilavachi of Soul Survivor says “Don’t just tell God how big the problem is; tell the problem how big God is.”
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 26th August 2012
