Good morning everyone…I just have to say…it has been a pleasure to be spending the last three weeks up here with you…normally in children’s church after talking for like 3 minutes I have to stop my lesson and tell someone to stop poking their neighbor, or to remain in their seats…or remind them that we listen with our ears and not our mouths…I haven’t had to do any of that for 3 weeks…it has been wonderful…I mean sure, some people have fallen asleep while I’m talking…but as long as you are not talking to your neighbor in your sleep…I’m ok…speaking of sleep…the one thing that has been hard these last three weeks is, every time I do anything up on this stage…I always have horrible nightmares the night before that something goes terribly, terribly wrong on Sunday morning…without fail…for example this last week I dreamed I woke up late and church had already started…so I freaked out, grabbed my suit and preaching notes, and drove to church in my pjs. And I got to church, placed my suit and notes in my office, and ran up to the sanctuary to grab an order of service to see how much time I had before I had to get up to preach…and I had about 10 minutes…so I ran down to my office, and someone had stolen my suit and preaching notes…so in my panic I didn’t know what to do, so I ran to our drama closet and the only two things I could find that fit me was a white pirate frilly blouse shirt, and old plaid polyester golf pants…why I thought that was a better choice than pjs I don’t know…anyways so then I was running, uncomfortably I might add, around trying to find a computer that worked so I could print my sermon notes…and I found Pastor Tyler and asked if I could please use his computer because my notes were saved online…so I grabbed his computer and thought I just need to type in the web address and I can do this…and I looked down at his computer and the keyboard was just a bunch of emoji faces…and in my panic and stress I yelled at Tyler, why can’t you just use the alphabet like the rest of the entire world…and at that moment the worship band started playing Layla by Eric Clapton…and I grabbed my head and screamed out….NOOOOOOOOO….that is my entrance song….I’m wearing polyester golf pants and a pirates blouse…and I don’t have my notes…..and I broke down crying, and all I could think was….I sure hope Rich isn’t watching this online….then my alarm went off and I literally jumped out bed, got dressed (in a suit)…and I got to church by 6:30….because there was no way I was hitting the snooze button…I wasn’t go back to that mess of a nightmare…
All that to say…I think I might have some problems with my brain…and this happens every time I get up here to preach…it is probably safe to say that bouncing around in my mind is the fear that whenever I have to preach, something is going to go terribly, terribly wrong…And I say fear instead of worry, because as similar as those two words are in that our body responds to those feelings the same way, fear and worry, are also very different from one another…Have you ever wondered what the difference between fear and worry is? PAUSE (I did a dramatic pause there in case you haven’t ever wondered that…so you’d be able to answer yes to my question)…the difference is this…worry is when we have negative thoughts and obsess about something that could possibly happen in the future…for example I’m worried because what if I lose my job, what if I get horribly sick with something, what if I have to wear polyester golf pants with a pirate shirt in public, what if something happens to one of my children…these things may or may not happen…but since we can’t control the future…we worry that things like this might happen (even if the chance of them happening is extremely small)….we worry because we are not in control
Fear on the other hand is a reaction to a real imminent event or danger in our lives, it is what we feel when something has moved beyond being a possibility, to become a reality…I have lost my job, I am horribly sick, I have a huge final coming up tomorrow, something has happened to one of my children…and I am afraid…and that fear will last with us until the imminent event or danger is over…So we worry about things that might possibly happen in the future, but we fear things that are happening or are about to happen in our lives.
Now the Bible is filled with passages about telling us not to worry…and in our mind that makes sense…I mean…whether you are a Christ follower or not…we can all agree that worry changes nothing…worry fixes nothing…and in a recent study they found that over 90% of the stuff we worry about never comes to pass anyways…so regardless of what we believe about God, we can all agree that we shouldn’t worry because it accomplishes nothing good and is a waste of time…and if you are a Christ follower you can go even a step farther and say we shouldn’t worry because not only does it accomplish no good…more importantly you believe that God is in control…and so we trust him with the future because He is in control of what we cannot control…so we don’t worry…
But….but…what are we supposed to do as Christians with that 10%...the stuff we worry about that does comes true…when we are faced with an imminent crisis and something terrible has gone from a worry to a reality…and we are…afraid…
This morning we are going be wrapping up our series called free…and we are going to be spending our time looking at a passage that clearly answers this question…what are we supposed to do when we are faced with an imminent crisis and something does go wrong…and we become afraid…what do we do?...we are going to be spending our time this morning in the book of Numbers, but before jump into our passage will you join me in a moment of prayer…Pray
So as I just mentioned we will be spending out time in the book of Numbers chapter 13:7-14:9…which if you are using the Black Pew Bible in front of you is page 110 in the Old Testament…Numbers 13:7 – 14:9, page 110 in the Old Testament. Now the book of Numbers was written by Moses, and it gets it super exciting name because at the beginning and the end of the book there is a census taken of the Israelites (which probably makes this your favorite book if you are an accountant). The reason for the two different censuses is because Numbers covers two generations of Israelites…the generation that was delivered from slavery in Egypt was counted, and then about 40 years later the next generation who are going to go in and take the Promised Land is counted…Now the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land should have only taken about 11 days…but it took the Israelites over 40 years…and you might be wondering why…and that is great question to ask…some of you wives might be thinking…well it’s obvious…they were being led by Moses and we all know men never stop and ask for directions…amiright…that’s one theory…
But why don’t we jump into our passage and find out what went wrong…Now to catch us up to speed…Numbers 13 takes place about 2 years after the Israelites have left Egypt….they stopped at Mt. Sinai to build a tabernacle to worship God, got the 10 commandments…and so they are ready to go into the promised land…and they are camped right at the edge of the promised land, and they are so so so excited to go into the land that God promised them over 800 years ago…and before going in Moses selects 12 men, one man from each of the tribes in Israel, and he tells them to go spy out the land before Israel invades…our journey begins with Moses talking to these spies in front of all the people…in verse 17 it reads
17 Moses gave the men these instructions as he sent them out to explore the land: “Go north through the Negev into the hill country. 18 See what the land is like, and find out whether the people living there are strong or weak, few or many. 19 See what kind of land they live in. Is it good or bad? Do their towns have walls, or are they unprotected like open camps? 20 Is the soil fertile or poor? Are there many trees? Do your best to bring back samples of the crops you see.” (It happened to be the season for harvesting the first ripe grapes.)
So these are great questions…is the land good? Is the soil good? What are the people like, weak or strong? Are the towns fortified with walls or open camps? So with that command in verse 21 it says…
21 So they went up and explored the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, near Lebo-hamath. 22 Going north, they passed through the Negev and arrived at Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai—all descendants of Anak—lived. 23 When they came to the valley of Eshcol, they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes so large that it took two of them to carry it on a pole between them! They also brought back samples of the pomegranates and figs. 24 That place was called the valley of Eshcol (which means “cluster”), because of the cluster of grapes the Israelite men cut there.25 After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned 26 to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land.
Ok so they spies were very busy…in order to cover all those places listed in 40 days they would have had to travel between 400 – 500 miles…this whole thing would have been so much easier with google maps and street view…and so they get a really good lay of the land, and even come back with a cluster of grapes that is so big it takes 2 men to carry it…in fact…to this day the official seal of the ministry of tourism for Israel is two guys carrying a bunch of grapes…now…these spies as far as we know stayed together….they all saw the exact same things…and armed with the information they gathered…they returned to Moses and the whole community who had been anxiously waiting for them for over a month to give their report…and in verse 27 it says…
27 This was their report to Moses: “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces. 28 But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak! The Amalekites live in the Negev, and the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan Valley.”
So the report starts out great…the land is good…the land is amazing…milk and honey and what not…and the people are so excited…and then bam…but the people are powerful, large fortified towns…and the descendants of Anak live there…basically the spies are saying…hey there is 240 billion dollars in gold in fort knox (which is true), but you have to take on the United States military to get it…so now the nation of Israel is faced with an imminent crisis…they came all this way to get to the promised land…and I’m sure they were worried that maybe the people living there were more powerful, or maybe the land wasn’t great…which is why they sent the spies out in the first place…but now one of those worries has become a reality…now, now that worry became a fear…and with this report suddenly the people start talking and things take a turn for the worse…and in verse 30 one of the spies tries to stop this…it says
30 But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!” 31 But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” 32 So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. 33 We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!”
And Caleb tries his best convince the people they can go in and win…but unfortunately it is too late…because what we have hear…is the classic expanding fish story…you know…I once caught a fish this big, and as time goes on every time you tell the story the fish gets a little bit bigger…until you become a grandpa and the fish is a now a blue whale…only here…the people are getting bigger, and they are getting bigger super-fast…in verse 28 the people are described as powerful, and some giants are mixed in there…in verse 32 now all the people are huge…in verse 33 the giants are mentioned again…and not only are the people getting bigger…the spies are shrinking…in verse 33 they say we are like grasshoppers and they are huge…an example we could relate to is it’s like me teaching in the 2’s and 3’s classroom cause I’m like 10 times their size….hello children…Godzilla is here to teach you about Jesus…and destroy your lego duplo buildings….and so in 14:1 it says…
14 Then the whole community began weeping aloud, and they cried all night. 2 Their voices rose in a great chorus of protest against Moses and Aaron. “If only we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness!” they complained. 3 “Why is the LORD taking us to this country only to have us die in battle? Our wives and our little ones will be carried off as plunder! Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?” 4 Then they plotted among themselves, “Let’s choose a new leader and go back to Egypt!”
So this just keeps going from bad to worse…because now they want to go back to Egypt…they would rather go back to being slaves, to being beaten and mistreated, they would rather go back to the land where they were being forced to throw their baby boys into the Nile river for crocodiles to munch on…than go into the promised land because they felt it was a death trap…it’s like the would your rather game my son loves…he comes up to me and says stuff like dad…would you rather not brush your teeth for a year, or not take a shower for a year… umm...neither….no dad you have to choose one…ummm…ok both…cause you might as well double down on being disgusting…wow ken your breath stinks…oh that’s not just my breath…that’s everything…basically the Israelites were like…do we go into the promised land to die, or back to Egypt to be slaves and die…
And what is sad is that these people had seen God do incredible things…they witnessed all the plagues in Egypt, they walked through the Red sea and watched as Pharaoh’s army, the most powerful army in the world at that time, get swallowed up in the sea by the power of God, they saw God show up in fire and thunder on Mt. Sinai, they had manna coming daily from heaven to eat, I mean I can a family in this camp sitting at the dinner table and the teenage son is complaining how God has abandoned them and can’t take care of them, and the mom is like…don’t talk with your mouth full Asher…finish chewing your manna first…and God is like….AAAACKKKK…I sent that manna to you this morning….everything you have seen and even what you are eating right now is screaming out to you that I will take care of you…but you can’t see it…why?
And they couldn’t see it because this is what has happened…we are going to do a little science experiment….and just for the record…if this goes wrong and something explodes and makes a big mess on the stage…there is a possibility that I may have paid someone to kill the lights if that happens so I can disappear from the stage and lay low for a while until the heat dies down because I promised Steve that wouldn’t happen…just a heads up if the lights go out and I’m not here anymore…you didn’t miss the rapture or anything…I just hate cleaning…
So let’s say that these two cups represent two spies…we will call them Caleb and Shammua...so they go into the land, they see the same people, the same cities, the same everything…and we are going to say these little crystals are all the things they saw…and we are going to dump them into our spies…and both spies also knew about the promises of God and had witnessed his power because they had seen all that He had done for Israel so far…and so we are going to say this ping pong ball represents that power and promises of God…and we are going to drop that into our two spies…now… the crystals are tiny compared to God’s power and promises…because if you asked shammua and Caleb…what is bigger and more powerful, God or a big dude…they would both say God…or who is stronger…God or a wall…they would both say God of course…we would say the same thing…so now both spies have God’s power and promises, and they both have the experiences of what they saw when they were spying together…
So why does Caleb say in verse 30 “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!”…while shamu says, well shamu says “I want to eat fish and jump through hoops”…let me try that again, Shammua says in verse 31, ““We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!”…the answer is…fear…because of the real and upcoming danger of fighting against walled cities and large men….shammua became afraid…and as the more he focused on what he saw…the more he talked about it with the other spies…the more his fear grew…
Let’s say this glass of water is fear… I pour this fear into our friend here and look what happens….his fear made the giants so big and the walls so tall in his mind…that they have completely swallowed up the power and promises of God…they are gone…Caleb on the other hand choses faith…yes there are giants (he doesn’t deny this), yes there are walls (he doesn’t deny this), but He chose to believe that the power and promises of God were stronger than the giants, and bigger than the walls…and so he was able to keep his perspective…and that is really the bottom line here…when we chose fear…we will lose our perspective and get swallowed up by that fear…we will…but that doesn’t happen when we chose faith…
So my question to you this morning is, what are the giants in your life, the walls standing before you, that are keeping you from stepping out in faith and obedience into the promises that God has for you…that are keeping you from experiencing his power…because they are making you afraid… I’m telling you that today is the day that you can put an end to that…by choosing faith over fear…
And for the record I am not saying the giants in your life aren’t strong or the walls aren’t high…I am not trying to belittle what you are going through at all….no one should ever go up to someone and say well it’s only cancer…that’s not a big deal…divorce…it happens all the time…you lost your job and you have no money…oh don’t worry it ain’t no thing…you are not helping someone when you say something like that at all…you’re just sticking a big old shamu sized flipper in your mouth…those are definitely giants….those are high walls…and we don’t pretend they aren’t there or they aren’t a big deal…they are a big deal…but we also don’t want to focus only the fear instead of choosing faith…faith that God is stronger than any giant we face, and bigger than any wall we run into…which is exactly what Caleb and Joshua did when they said in 14:5…
5 Then Moses and Aaron fell face down on the ground before the whole community of Israel. 6 Two of the men who had explored the land, Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, tore their clothing. 7 They said to all the people of Israel, “The land we traveled through and explored is a wonderful land! 8 And if the LORD is pleased with us, he will bring us safely into that land and give it to us. It is a rich land flowing with milk and honey. 9 Do not rebel against the LORD, and don’t be afraid of the people of the land. They are only helpless prey to us! They have no protection, but the LORD is with us! Don’t be afraid of them!”
But unfortunately when you read on in chapter 14 you find that the people didn't listen...and so God sends them into the wilderness for 40 years...one year for every day the spies were in the land...and no one from that generation that failed to choose faith over fear got to go into the Promised land, except for Caleb and Joshua... if only they could have listened...
Twice in verse 9 they say…don’t be afraid…don’t be afraid….because the Lord is with us…
God has been in the business of slaying giants and tearing down walls since Adam and Eve took a bite from the tree the knowledge of good and evil…from the moment the relationship between us and God was shattered because of sin…God already had a plan on how to tear down that wall and fix that relationship…and honestly that is what Palm Sunday is all about…Jesus was riding into Jerusalem, and after seeing all the miracles he had done and seeing how much power he had…everyone thought he was going to come into the city and begin a war and overthrow the Romans who were in control of Israel…and the Romans were definitely a big giant in the lives of Israelites…and so they are celebrating and waving palm branches as Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey…and they are singing, “Praise God for the Son of David! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the LORD! Praise God in highest heaven!”…and while they think Jesus is there to free them from the Romans…he is actually there to slay a much bigger giant…Jesus came to put an end to death itself…and by dying on the cross for our sins later that week, and raising again on Easter Sunday…he did just that…he killed the biggest giant of all…death itself…in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is talking about what Jesus did on the cross and he says, “Death is swallowed up in victory.55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. 57 But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.58 So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable.
I mean I can’t imagine how angry Satan must have been…because sin leads to death…and so Jesus takes all our sin and he dies…death seems to have swallowed up Jesus…when Jesus died Satan must have been throwing the biggest party hell has ever seen….and then Easter happens and Jesus says, “I’m back!”….and Satan is crushed because death was like his ultimate weapon…it was his finishing move…no one came back from death…and Jesus just ripped that weapon right out of Satan’s hand and snapped it in half…so now when our time is up here on earth we don’t fear death because death has died itself…Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:8, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord…For a Christ follower…basically when we draw our last breath here on earth, the next one is heaven…and so if God can grant us victory over sin and death…then we truly have nothing to fear…are there giants that stand in our way…yeah…do we run into walls that are so high that we can’t see over them…yeah…but are we going to panic…no…are we going to be afraid…no…not because the giants aren’t powerful and the walls aren’t high…but because God is more powerful than any giant, and he is greater and bigger than any wall…and so we will choose faith over fear… choose faith over fear…and we won’t let the giants and the walls in our lives keep us from stepping out in faith and obedience into the promises that God has for you and I…
So we have reached the end of this series…and my hope in all this is that you can be free …In 1 Corinthians 13:13 Paul writes, “three things will last forever – faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love.” Jesus Christ came to this earth, because he loved you, because he wanted to save you, because he wants a relationship with you, and because he wants you to be free…free to live a life that fueled by faith, a life that is filled with hope, a life that is characterized by love…a life that is fueled by faith, filled with hope, and characterized by love…that is the life he wants for everyone in this room…but you must make the choice to make that life yours...
