Engaging The Giants Series

Let’s Get Engaged

Pt. 3 – “Engaging the Giants”

I am mentioned to you over the last couple of weeks that we have a job to do. We have a position to fill. That position is between the living and the dead to stop the plague. It isn’t enough to come in here and eat well each week. We are fed to feed. Then last week I challenged you that too many of us love pigs more than we love people. We have our mind on things and money and fail to see the plight of broken people around us. Did you do your homework? Did you follow the money trail? Where is your heart?

Reaching out is never easy to do. We have all have a natural tendency to follow the path of least resistance. We understand that outreach is difficult. Reaching out can be challenging and uncomfortable at times. So we tend to relegate outreach to special events that we do occasionally during the year and we allow that to pacify our conscious and fail to recognize that outreach is a lifestyle not an event. It should be a natural part of who we are. We should reach out everywhere we go. There should be a reaction when people come into contact with us. And yet, for most of us this is difficult and a stretch and so we isolate ourselves, we protect ourselves, and we insulate ourselves by hanging out with others like us.

And yet we know that we know that we have been promised the land. Everywhere we go, everywhere our foot lands we are supposed to take for our king. We have an inheritance – the earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof. We are simply called and directed to take back what belongs to Him. It is our promise. The challenge is that we find ourselves in the same place that the Children of Israel found themselves. We were captives. Slaves. In bondage. In chains. Now set free. We are ready to take what is ours. We are ready to win the world and before we can possess . . . . well let me show you what happens to them.

Text: Numbers 13:1-2, 25-28, 30-33; Joshua 15:13-14

1GOD spoke to Moses: 2“Send men to scout out the country of Canaan that I am giving to the People of Israel. Send one man from each ancestral tribe, each one a tried-and-true leader in the tribe.”

25After forty days of scouting out the land, they returned home. 26They presented themselves before Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation of the People of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. They reported to the whole congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. 27Then they told the story of their trip: “We went to the land to which you sent us and, oh! It does flow with milk and honey! Just look at this fruit! 28The only thing is that the people who live there are fierce, their cities are huge and well fortified. Worse yet, we saw descendants of the giant Anak.

30Caleb interrupted, called for silence before Moses and said, “Let’s go up and take the land—now. We can do it.” 31But the others said, “We can’t attack those people; they’re way stronger than we are.” 32They spread scary rumors among the People of Israel. They said, “We scouted out the land from one end to the other—it’s a land that swallows people whole. Everybody we saw was huge. 33Why, we even saw the Nephilim giants (the Anak giants come from the Nephilim). Alongside them we felt like grasshoppers. And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers.”

13Joshua gave Caleb son of Jephunneh a section among the people of Judah, according to GOD’s command. He gave him Kiriath Arba, that is, Hebron. Arba was the ancestor of Anak. 14Caleb drove out three Anakim from Hebron: Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, all descendants of Anak.

We like the Israelites are ready to possess when suddenly we realize that there are giants in the land. The reason outreach is so difficult for most of us is that it requires us to face some giants that we don’t like to square off against. We don’t even like to admit that they exist and that they have power over us. In order for us to be able to engage our culture we must be willing to first engage the same giants that were in the land that day. Like Caleb we must have a courageous spirit and kill these giants. We must confront and conquer the three giants that I believe have kept and continue to keep us from reaching out to those God has given to us. Every time we are ready to become engaged these same three giants will show up.