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.
A. Sheshai
The first giant Caleb drove out was Sheshai. There is some debate over what his name means. However, one man who studied the meaning says Sheshai means “Prim, proper, or formal.”
Most of us would say, that has no bearing on us right now. We are a long way from formal and we aren’t really concerned about being prim or proper. But this giant will show up when we try to take territory.
When someone walks in who has never been in church. Who doesn’t know how to act. Who doesn’t know what he should and should not say. When I give you instructions during a prayer time to curse the enemy and this new person standing next to actually begins his prayer Satan you are Son of a.... Then the giant will arise.
When a bum who reeks of alcohol and urine decides to sit down by your three year old the giant of prim and proper will rise up.
When the young person who is into drugs and in trouble with the law decides to become involved in our youth group the giant will stand up.
When a person visits our family who doesn’t even dress up to our relaxed standards the giant will rise up.
This giant will walk into this place when the real black people show up. When the real Hispanic people show up. When the white people show up. What are talking about? I am talking about those people that God sends our way that actually do fit the stereotype we have in our formed in my mind. If all black people or all Hispanic people could be like them I could love them, well their not. There will be those who bring all kinds of cultural differences with them. Who dress differently, talk differently (maybe even a different language). What if they don’t know how to fit in? What if they don’t try to adapt? The giant will show up and try to get us to think that they should try to fit in? Who is to say they should try to fit in? Why shouldn’t we adapt? I am telling you that this giant will convince us that things aren’t proper and I am telling you this giant must fall. If you haven’t figured it out I am against prejudice. I don’t care if their skin is black if their heart is white. Some of the white folks you are so fond of have a black heart! It is our heart that matters.
This giant can arise in regards to how we do things. If we do them differently that you think we should this giant will rise up. When we walk in and everything isn’t just like you thought it should be. When the stage isn’t done like you wanted, when the services aren’t run just like you wanted, when the activity you wanted isn’t done then this giant will show up.
We may not think we will face this giant but we will. We must drive this giant from the land.
B. Ahiman
The second giant that Caleb faced is this giant that I believe is doing the most damage and keeps us from engaging. Ahiman’s name means, “Who is my brother?” This is the giant of apathy and indifference.
Dante said, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in a time of great moral crisis.” I think you could go on say that the coldest, deadest churches are also reserved for those who do nothing when those around them are dying and going to hell.”
We are face to face with a time of great moral crisis and when you look around and discover that:
There has been a 92% increase in the number of unchurched Americans in the last 16 years. In 1991 there were 39 million unchurched Americans compared with 75 million currently and yet of Christian adults only (54%) feel a sense of responsibility to tell others about their faith. And that the average church in America spends $250,000 a year only to win 1 person to Christ.
You suddenly come to the realization that Ahiman is roaming throughout our hearts and churches.
Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie
But rather mourn the apathetic throng
The cowed and the meek
Who see the world’s great anguish and it’s wrong
And dare not speak.
Ralph Chaplin
We are more concerned about what church can do for me. We come to church and want to be entertained. Our attitude is give me goosebumps. Church is about me. It is about my condition. My pain. My healing. My desires. My wants. Concerned with my own growth, my own comfort sing my favorite song, preach my style of message, go as long as I want you to go), own progress.
How many of you have been so concerned with the condition of those around you that you are so overcome with a spirit of intercession that you can’t get off of your face for weeping for them. That you can’t walk through the mall without weeping. How many of you are so concerned with the spiritual condition of those around you that you give up your own comfort, your own time, your own money, own desires, ambitions, goals to reach out to those who need to hear.
We must understand that when we come together like this we are not here for the goose bumps and the feel goods. I realize that we all have our issues and needs. But we must not become so wrapped up in us that we forget that we are here to be challenged, changed, and commissioned to go back to our world and take territory. Shake off the apathy. Shake off the lack of concern. It is time to realize that it is our responsibility to tell everyone everywhere about Jesus
One man said, “Love will find a way but indifference will find an excuse.” Do we have excuses or solutions? Ahiman must die. We must begin to find out who our brothers are and rescue them. The issue is not whether they need a church. The issue is whether we realize this church needs them.
C. Talmai
I want to deal with the third giant Caleb faced next. His name was Talmai. His name means, “Brave or bold”. As we try to engage our culture this giant will rise up and try to scare us into backing down. This giant will try to swell up and stop us from moving forward. He will try to intimidate and petrify us. When we are ridiculed. When we have a door slammed in our face. When we are threatened this giant is trying to keep us from possessing territory. Do you really believe that our enemy will easily and gladly give up territory and souls that he once held with no fight? Scare tactics. Strategy to immobilize us. The enemy will try to frighten us into freezing.
We know and can quote the verses of Scripture that tell us that God has not given us a spirit of fear. We quote it but don’t believe it. We operate in fear. Afraid that someone will laugh. Afraid that someone will point. Afraid that someone will label us as a freak. Afraid that we will have to give up our dreams and ambitions. Afraid that we will have to sacrifice. Afraid that it will cost too much. Afraid that we won’t be accepted. Afraid that we will fail. Afraid that we will mess up. Afraid. Afraid. Afraid.
Max Lucado says this:
Fear. His mode of operation is to manipulate you with the mysterious, to taunt you with the unknown. Fear of death, fear of failure, fear of God, fear of tomorrow—his arsenal is vast. His goal? To create cowardly, joyless souls. He doesn’t want you to make the journey to the mountain. He figures if he can rattle you enough, you will take your eyes off the peaks and settle for a dull existence in the flatlands.
Fear rattles us and keeps us from the significant. We settle for survival. We settle for less than what God has for us.
I am reminded of the story about lions. The old lion who had no speed, strength, or teeth is position in one area and roars and scared the animals into running into young lions that kill them. Safety was found only in running to the roar.
We must make up our minds this evening that regardless of how loud or how ferociously our enemy roars, regardless of how big he tries to make himself look, in spite of the fact that he looks strong we must run to the roar. We must remember that he is like a roaring lion. He is putting on a show. It is a façade a charade. He is like a lion he is not the Lion. We must run right at the giant and bury him. We cannot be scared into standing still. We must not be afraid of the future or the past.
What are you afraid of? What is keeping you from reaching the person you share an office with at work? What is keeping you from saying something to the person you talk to at the counter every day? What is keeping you from crossing the street?
We must face this giant and declare with the Psalmist, “The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” “The Lord is my Shepard I shall not fear!”
If we are to engage our culture we must search and destroy the giants of prim, proper, apathy, and fear. We will be unlikely to make any impact in this city or in the lives of those around us if we allow these giants to survive. Before we can take territory, before we can find the promise, before we can expect to grow substantially we must deal with these giants and they must die!
