How Negitive People Can Affect A Positive World

How Negative People Can Affect A Positive World

Deuteronomy 1:20-34

Many of you have came to me and said, “I’ve got a question for you”. For those of you who have, you know what my reply is, “true”. The problem with that answer is that I have not even heard the question yet. I simply want to try and be positive. And that is what I want to talk to you about this morning. Why we should be positive. Because a negative person can have a negative effect on someone and cause them to have some negative results.

Coming from a sales background I know the effects of both a positive person and a negative person can have. If you want to be successful in sales you need to hang around positive people. Negative people will pull you down, while positive people will build you up. I have a friend of mine who is a friend but I hate to watch a ball game with him. He is so negative, and gets down on what he calls “his team” real quick. Win or lose, I like to support my team.

Maybe you are negative and you really don’t realize it. I’ve never told my friend that I prefer not to watch the game with him; I don’t want to hurt our friendship. But for me personally I would much rather hang around a positive person than I would a negative person.

And what we need to realize that often times, we only get one shot at making a positive attitude on someone. And if you are here this morning and you are a Christian, then you may only have one chance to make the right impression to lead someone to Christ. As a church, when a visitor walks through the door, we may only have one chance to make an impression on them that will cause them to want to come back. Once chance, a chance that can either draw someone to Christ, or we can mess up and someone can spend an eternity in hell because we have been a negative person in a positive world.

So let’s look back at a story in the Old Testament that tells how negative people caused a lot of people to have a negative result. Open your Bibles with me and let’s read Deuteronomy 1:20-34.

This event is also recorded in Numbers 13. Let me kind of paraphrase this story to you. The Israelites were captive slaves in the land of Egypt. They cried out to God for deliverance, and God heard their cries and though a man named Moses delivered them from their bondage. They witnessed the pelages to the land of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and manna from heaven, the water from a rock, the fire by night, and the cloud by day to guide them. But now they arrived at their destination. The Promise Land, promised to them by God.

Yet after experiencing all that with God they wanted to send some men, spies as they called them, to search out the land and come back and tell them how it was. Twelve went out, came back with a cluster of grapes so big that they had to have two men carry it on a pole. Their report, “It truly flows with milk and honey”, But ten of those spies, those with the negative attitude said this. “Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large”.

Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, the ones with the positive attitude said, “The land we passed through to spy out is exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey”.

The result… Numbers 14:36-38 Now the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation complain against him by bringing a bad report of the land, those very men who brought the evil report about the land, died by the plague before the LORD. But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive, of the men who went to spy out the land.

Notice here the language used, the men… who returned and MADE all the congregation complain… Those negative men got the death penalty, but the positive men, Joshua and Caleb, remained alive.

So from this story lets us look at the lessons to see the dangers of being negative in a positive world. The first thing I want us to notice is…

God is Positive

In the title of my sermon, you might have found it strange to read the words positive world. You probably thought what world is He talking about. The world we know today is a wicked, cruel world; full of hate, crime, and war. But the truth of the matter is, the world we live in today was not world God intended.