Welcome to Resurrection Parish, whether you are joining us here at our Holy Name Church or online through our live-stream. Today we begin the sixth week of our summer message series, “Moses: Lifelong Journey of Faith.” Throughout this series we have been looking at the remarkable life of Moses, one of the most important people in the Old Testament, and what we can learn from him for our own lifelong faith journey.
In the first week, we learned that gratitude is the foundation of greatness. In the second week, we learned that we can be freed from the “limiting beliefs” we have about ourselves and our circumstances by listening to the “liberating truths” that God reveals to us, so that we can become the person that God has created us to be. In the third week, from the drama and excitement of the ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea, we learned that God rewards those who move forward, and trust that He will act. In week four we learned an important leadership lesson, taught to Moses by his father-in-law, Jethro, that effective leaders are delegators, and not merely doers. Last week we looked at the lowest moment of the Exodus experience, the infidelity of the Golden Calf. From that experience, we learned that God is looking for people who are willing to exercise extreme ownership for the people they lead, like Moses, who was willing to sacrifice himself for the Israelites. While God did not require Moses to make that sacrifice, Jesus did make that sacrifice for all of us.
As we mentioned last week, the worship of the Golden Calf had disastrous results for the Israelites. Whereas God intended for them to be a nation of priests, revealing His love and plans to all the nations, now only the Levites will be priests. While the Israelites were only supposed to be at Sinai for a couple of months, after the Golden Calf, they have to stay there for a whole year. And so the momentum of the nation slows down as God has to put in place all these extra rules and laws that he had never intended. Sin complicates things. The legal procedure for renewing Israel’s broken covenant—while temporarily suspending their sentence—takes up the rest of Exodus (chapters 33-40), all of Leviticus and the first ten chapters of Numbers!
After leaving Mount Sinai, the Israelites travel to a place called Kadesh Barnea, which was just a few miles from the Promised Land. Kadesh Barnea was to be the staging area before the Israelites invaded it.
Before they moved into the Promised Land, God said to Moses, “Send men to reconnoiter the land of Canaan, which I am giving the Israelites. You shall send one man from each ancestral tribe, every one a leader among them” (Nu 13:2). God wanted the Israelites to imagine themselves in the Promised Land. More than that though, it was to show them that it was a land worth fighting for.
After forty days, the group of twelve returned with a report from the Promised Land. And just as God had said, it was full of great things. And the spies reported as much. “They told Moses: ‘We came to the land to which you sent us. It does indeed flow with milk and honey, and here is its fruit. However, the people who are living in the land are powerful, and the towns are fortified and very large. Besides, we saw descendants of the Anakim there’” (Nu 13:27–28).
So the spies verify that the land is a good land just as God had promised, but the cities were well fortified and the people were strong. And there were all these obstacles to possessing the land. “Caleb, however, quieted the people before Moses and said, ‘We ought to go up and seize the land, for we can certainly prevail over it’” (Nu 13:30).
So ten of the spies focus on the problems but two spies, Caleb and Joshua, focus on the opportunities. They agree there will be obstacles, there will be hardships but believe they can overcome them.
Whatever you focus upon gets bigger. If you focus on your problems they get bigger. If you focus on your opportunities, they get bigger. And while it can be helpful to know the obstacles, we have to be careful we don’t let them dissuade us from where God is leading us.
The Bible then tells us, “But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We cannot attack these people; they are too strong for us’” (Nu 13:31). There will always be naysayers who look at the negatives of a problem. When it comes to fulfilling a dream or a goal, we certainly shouldn’t ignore reality or the difficulties in a goal but we have to be careful that we don’t focus so much on the problems that it overwhelms the opportunity. This is what happens with ten of the twelve spies. Whatever you focus upon gets bigger. If you focus on your problems they get bigger. If you focus on your opportunities, they get bigger.
How do you think the rest of the Israelites reacted? They still did not trust God. Even after all that the Lord had done for them – freed them from slavery in Egypt, parted the Red Sea, gave them bread from Heaven, water from a rock, forgiving their infidelity with the Golden Calf – the Israelites are more willing to believe the ten naysayers. In fact, they want to select a new leader, and return to Egypt where they were slaves.
This can happen in every area of our lives. We can want to go back to the things that enslaved us because they were comfortable. Let me go back to being overweight. Let me go back to being in great debt. Let me go back to that bad relationship. Let me go back to that job where I was miserable. We allow sins or things that enslave us to remain in our lives because in some way they were working for us. We got something out of the exchange, even if it comes at the price of our freedom or the cost of something much better. When it comes to entering the Promised Land, God wants to get us there, but there will always be a temptation to want to go back to Egypt.
Moses and Aaron are at a loss as to what to do, and they fall on their faces before the people. Joshua and Caleb remind the Israelites of the opportunity awaiting them, reminding them that the land is exceedingly good.
Unfortunately the Israelites do not listen to them. “The whole community threatened to stone them. But the glory of the LORD appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites. And the LORD said to Moses: How long will this people spurn me? How long will they not trust me, despite all the signs I have performed among them?” (Nu 14:10–11).
Once again God threatens to destroy the Israelites, but once again Moses steps in to defend the people. Once again God says he will not destroy them but now he says, “I pardon them as you have asked. Yet, by my life and the LORD’s glory that fills the whole earth, of all the people who have seen my glory and the signs I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and who nevertheless have put me to the test ten times already and have not obeyed me, not one shall see the land which I promised on oath to their ancestors. None of those who have spurned me shall see it” (Nu 14:20–23).
And so with that the generation of the Israelites who had escaped Egypt will never see the Promised Land. With a few exceptions. Caleb, as well as Joshua, get to enter the Promised Land. Caleb gets to enter because he has a different spirit. What was different about Caleb’s spirit? Caleb had a fighting sprit, a warrior spirit. Whereas the rest of the Israelites refused to engage in the fight, Caleb believed that they should fight because God was with them in the fight.
At times we have to find the spirit of Caleb and warrior up. We need to find the desire to battle the huge obstacles and problems that stand in the way of where we want to go. The fighting spirit is so much better than the victim spirit.
Find the warrior spirit in you. Stop telling God how big your problems are and instead start telling your problems how big your God is. I’m not going to let my problems bully me. I’m not going to let the obstacles in my life bully me. I am going to embrace the Caleb spirit.
The Caleb spirit knows that we don’t fight our battles on our own, but with God’s help and God’s power. I am going to believe God to be with me in the fight. It requires faith to fight and believe that God will bring us victory. Find the warrior in you so that God can get you to the promised land. It is not that far.
Bottom Line: Stop telling God about how big your problems are. Instead start telling your problems about how big your God is. So this week identify something in your life where you need to “warrior up” by looking at the opportunities more than the problems.