Word of Salvation – Vol.46 No.31- August 2001

 

Grasshoppers or Powerful Royalty?

 

Sermon by Rev P Abetz on Numbers 13:33

Scripture Readings: Numbers 13:26 - 14:9; Mt 28:16-20; 1 Pet 2:9

 

Beloved in the Lord,

In the hippie era of the 1960s and 1970s, many young people made pilgrimages to India and other places to try and find themselves.  They painted slogans like “make love, not war” on the sides of their beat up old VW vans.  They tried alternative lifestyles of communes to living off the land.  They wanted to know: Who am I?  What is life really all about?

Is life about getting an education, getting a good job, settling down, having a family, acquiring lots of material possessions, and then just dying.  For many young people that just seemed so empty.  They felt there must be more to life than that.

Today, many young and not so young people still struggle with that question: What is life really all about?  Is the dehumanisation imposed blind pursuit of economic rationalism and globalisation really what life is about?

Many try and find answers in New Age philosophy, only to discover that it really does not answer the deepest issues.  And so they drift from one ‘teacher’ to the next.

Others don’t think too much about the future, they just focus on having a good time now!  Life is about having a good time now.  But after a while, when the hangovers get too great, those good times can become pretty empty, too.  Others try and find meaning in constant travel, and seeing more and more of the world.  But in the end that does not give answers either.

Just about everyone has asked themselves at some stage in their life: Who am I?  How do I fit into the big scheme of things?  The way we see ourselves fitting into the big picture of things has a huge bearing on how we live, and on what we seek to accomplish in life.  The account we read from Numbers demonstrates that very powerfully.

When the people of Israel refused to see themselves as part of the big picture of God’s plans and purposes, they were only able to look to themselves, and they saw themselves as grasshoppers.  Fear overwhelmed them, and paralysed them.  And so they were unwilling to take up the challenge to enter the Promised Land.

Let’s just review the setting of our text:

1.  The Setting

First we need to go back to Exodus 3:17, where God gave them a promise: “I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt, into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites - a land flowing with milk and honey.”  That was God’s clear promise to the people.  And they had heard that promise.

They knew that God had acted on that promise by bringing about the ten plagues that finally led to Pharaoh letting the people go.  Then there had been the parting of the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptian army.  This was clear evidence of God’s power and protection.  Then they had witnessed the amazing events at Mount Sinai, with the giving of the Ten Commandments.  Then there had been the provision of manna, the quail, the cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night.  God had repeated that He Himself would bring them into the land of Canaan, and give it to them (Ex 13:11).  Then there had been the wonderful celebration of the first Passover, where they celebrated God’s mighty deeds in freeing them from slavery in Egypt.

It had been an action packed thirteen months since they had left the land of Egypt.  And now, just four weeks after the first Passover celebration, they stand on the borders of that rich land.

In Numbers 13:1 we read that God told Moses to "send some men to explore the land of Canaan which I am giving to the Israelites.  From each ancestral tribe, send one of its leaders." One leader from each tribe was selected and they went to check it out.

And we find two contrasting positions as they reported back:

2.  The Contrasting Reports

Even though they drew different conclusions, all the spies were unanimous that it was a great land, very fruitful, “flowing with milk and honey” (13:27).  They confirmed that what God had promised about the land flowing with milk and honey was indeed true!  The glowing terms with which God had described the land was not an exaggeration.

BUT, ten of the twelve spies said the people there are "powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large” (Num.13:28).  Now as far as a statement of fact is concerned, they were right.  The cities were powerful.  They were fortified.  They were large.  But implied in what they were saying was the thought: We cannot take this land!

That is so amazing!  Despite all that God had done for them in the past thirteen months – the way He had willingly used His might and power to provide for them – they lacked the faith to take hold of the land that God had said HE would give them.  The problem was, they could only think in terms of what they could accomplish on their own.  And so they describe themselves as grasshoppers.

That is where Caleb steps forward.  Caleb said: “Come on, let’s go, we can do this."  For Caleb was conscious of God’s promises and believed himself to be the rightful inheritor of the land.  But the other spies said, NO!  “The people are stronger than we are.”  They even lied about it: claiming that the land "devours those living in it."  And they completed their assessment by saying, "We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes - and that is how they saw us too!”

Can you see what happened?  The majority of the spies saw they could not take the land in their own strength, and they refused to believe God’s promises.  They refused to obey God’s call on their lives.  They were too scared to step out in faith, even though they had seen the mighty power of God displayed in such direct ways in the previous thirteen months.

The fact that they had felt like grasshoppers next to the giants of that land was quite understandable.  But the people in the land there would have appeared exactly the same size to Joshua and Caleb.  The difference was that Joshua and Caleb looked to their God.  And they knew that their God was no grasshopper!

He was God Almighty, who had acted powerfully in the past, and they were confident that He would act again on their behalf, because He is a faithful God, who keeps His promises.  So to them there was no doubt that God would give the people of Israel the land of Canaan as He had promised.

The other ten spies did not look to God.  Their problem was that they looked at how they felt about themselves, rather than believe the promises of God.  That is why they did not have the courage to conquer the land.  Rather than trust God, they wanted to offer themselves as slaves to the Egyptians again!

Their lack of vision for the future – a future which God had promised and guaranteed – led them to be paralysed with fear.  And so they wanted to go back to the old ways: Be slaves in Egypt!

Let that be a warning to us.  When the church loses its vision of the Kingdom and what God has called it to do and to be, it will revert to its old traditions not because of their value, but because it is familiar.  It saves the people from having to face the fear of uncertainty of what God might want from them.

What a contrast there is between the attitudes of Caleb and the other ten spies!  Caleb and Joshua believed what God had promised.  That gave them confidence to enter the Promised Land.

It is easy for us with the benefit of hindsight to point the finger at the people of Israel for their lack of faith.  But in our own lives, we often prefer to go back to sinful ways we have known for a long time rather than step out into new life that God promises us.

For us today, our calling is not to conquer the land of Canaan.  That was God’s call to the people of the Exodus.  Our calling as part of the New Testament church is to be soldiers of Christ, and to claim the kingdom that belongs to Him – to bring every area of our own lives into submission to Him.

Jesus gave us the great commission: "Go make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." (Mt 28:19-20).

As a church community we so often think of all kinds of excuses as to why we can’t do that.  We try and convince ourselves that the unbelievers would not be interested.

Or we say to ourselves that we are not clever enough to explain the gospel in a convincing way to the post-modern man.  Or we don’t want to make a fool of ourselves by saying the wrong thing and looking stupid.

Or we excuse ourselves because we are busy with teaching those within the church to obey everything that God has commanded.

When it comes to fulfilling God’s calling on our lives, all too often we think of ourselves as grasshoppers just as the Israelites did.  But look at what Jesus says: “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me" (Mt 28:18).  Jesus declares that he has been given all authority.  He declares that He has the power to accomplish whatever He wants in this world.  So we are not called to conquer Satan’s domain in our own strength, but by His power!  Just as God would go ahead of the people of Israel in their battles to conquer the land, so the Holy Spirit goes ahead of us and prepares the way.

And what’s more: Read 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."

So let us not be afraid of fulfilling God’s calling!  The task may seem daunting.  But so did conquering the Promised Land!

Just as the people of Israel should have recalled the mighty acts of God on their behalf over that thirteen month period, so let us recall the mighty acts of God on our behalf.  The miracles that God performed to save us were in many ways far greater than the miracles that God performed to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt.

The fact that a hopelessly lost sinner, who is incapable of turning to God, and indeed is hostile to God (Rom 8:7-8), has his heart changed to love God and to seek Him is a greater miracle than turning the River Nile to blood.  Let us keep telling each other the great things that God has done, lest we forget them.

God knows how prone we are to forget that we have been freed from the land of slavery to sin, the kingdom of darkness.  And how often don’t we want to wander back to that kingdom, rather than live the new life that is ours in Christ.

[(Reader: the following paragraph could be used if the sermon is preached prior to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper...)
That is why He also gave us the sacraments.  The Lord’s Supper reminds us of the great cost and love with which we were redeemed from slavery to sin.  God was prepared to let His only Son suffer and die on the cross of Calvary and experience separation from God so that you and I would never need to be separated from God again.
May the Lord’s Supper remind us in a very physical way, that we can have utter confidence in our God to act on our behalf to enable us to fulfil his calling on our lives.]

Conclusion

By God’s grace in Christ, we are no longer grasshoppers.  We have become powerful royalty – sons and daughters of the living God.  Let us then step out with faith and courage and fulfil God’s calling on our lives to make disciples of all nations.  By the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, we can accomplish great things for God and His kingdom!

Amen.