3. The
Crux of the Matter
Numbers 13:27-28 And
they told him, "We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with
milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
Yet the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are
fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.
All God’s Promised Lands have giants.
-
Larry Craig
Have you ever been really
disappointed? The key to being really
disappointed is to have real high expectations.
I have a relative, who will remain anonymous, who believes: Expect the
worse, and then you won’t be disappointed.
It is a fact that a lot of people are afraid to hope for things, because
they are afraid of being disappointed.
And that is quite understandable.
If you don’t know the
story from which our opening quote is from, you have no idea the amount of
disappointment that these people experienced.
The Israelites had been slaves in
Egypt for 400 years. God came to
deliver them out of this bondage through the hand of Moses. He told them that He would bring them to
their own land, their inheritance, His gift to them, a land flowing with milk
and honey. When they finally come to
this land, they send spies to search out the land and to bring back a report. The land indeed flowed with milk and
honey. They brought back some of the
fruit of the land to show them. It was
greater than they would have imagined, so great they had to bring some back as
proof. Otherwise no one would have
believed them.
But this land was also
already inhabited. Not only was it
merely already inhabited, the people of this land made them feel like
grassheppers by comparison. Many of
these inhabitants were descendants of a race of giants. There were twelve spies who had been sent and
ten of them reported to the people that they would not be able to take the
land. Not even a chance of it. Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, believed
that God would do what He said, if they would but believe and obey. But the people could not believe that they
could take the land. They were so
heartbroken that they wished they had died in the wilderness. Suddenly their old life in Egypt looked good
to them, and there was even serious talk of returning to Egypt. It would have meant a return to a life of
slavery, but they were in the wilderness with no place to go.
And because they were
afraid, they never did enter that land.
That entire generation except for a very few peoplo died in the
wilderness. Then forty years later, the
nation tried again. This time they faced
the challenge and went in and possessed the land.
Can you imagine the shock
and disappointment of these people? God
makes these great and wonderful promises to them, and then when the time comes
when they are to be fulfilled, it looks as impossible as the first day they
heard them. Which is probably the whole
point of it. They were slaves to the
mightiest nation on the earth at that time.
Moses appears and announces that they will soon be free. Sure, Moses.
Like we are going to just walk out of here. It took a liittle convincing, and the leaders
were ready to accept that maybe this might actually be true. Their hopes were soon dashed when Pharoah
turned dowm Moses’ request for freedom and then increased the Israelites’
workload.
But God did deliver them
and in ways far greater than they would have imagined. God brought down great plagues of judgment on
the Egyptians, while showing the Israelites distinct favor by drawing a clear
mark of separation between them and their masters when the plagues fell. So the Israelites did indeed walk out of
Egypt and started for their Promised Land.
But Egypt was not quite
ready to let them go completely. They
sent their army after them and found them caught up against the Red Sea with
nowhere to go for escape. When the
Israelites appreciated the extent of their danger, again God intervened
miraculously and provided a way of escape by opening a path through the sea and
then drowning the Egyptians in one final act of judgment on that nation.
So they were faced with
two impossible situations: walking out of their bondage and then escaping the
wrath of the Egyptian army. Yet now they
found themselves in another impossible situation. Now what do they do? You can almost see a pattern developing
here. The first impossible situation
they had nothing to lose. Can this God
deliver us? Well, if He doesn’t, we are
still slaves. Nothing has changed. But God did deliver them and with a mighty
hand.
In this second situation,
again things look impossible. Again,
nothing that they can do. Either God
delivers them or He doesn’t. If He does,
great. If He doesn’t, we die or return
to slavery. But there is no third
option. We just sit and watch what God
will do. And He does deliver them, and
in a way that clearly demonstrates His power.
Now we have another
impossible situation, only this is a little different. They are no longer passive observers of
God. Now they have to act, to do
something. If they don’t, God
won’t. If they try and God doesn’t help
them, they are lost. If they do nothing,
they won’t lose anything in a sense that life will just go on the way it
has. But they will miss out on God’s
best for them. We could even say that
they would be missing God’s will for their lives. That doesn’t mean that God would no longer
bless them or provide for them or protect them or cease to be their God, but
clearly God wanted them to possess the land, and they did not enter because of
their unbelief.[1]
A few of them figured
that if God delivered them from the Egyptians, He could and would deliver them
from these Canaanites. But unfortunately
the rest of the Israelites looked at the immensity of their problem and saw it
as impossible and gave up hope.
When this happened, God
was angry with them. So angry in fact
that He was ready to destroy them and make a new nation. But Moses interceded for them and God spared
them. But God did not come down and
clear the land of its inhabitants. He
did not take away their problem. He
expected them to face their problem with courage and faith. When they ddin’t, whether they couldn’t or
wouldn’t, He made them wander for 40
years in the wilderness, until that entire generation died off. Then He brought the next generation back to
the Promised Land to try this whole thing again. Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who believed
that they could do it, because God would help them like He had in the past,
also entered the land with that new generation.
Question: Did God want them to enter the land the first
time or not? Of course, He did. .
Otherwise, why would He have been so angry with them for not entering
it? I cannot believe that God was just
being angry for effect. He really
expected that they should have done this thing.
I am not saying He was surprised by their response. I can believe that with His intimate and
complete knowledge of the hearts of the people, He would have known what they
would have chosen. But why was He angry
with them? He asked Moses, "How
long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in
spite of all the signs which I have done in their midst?”[2]
I have often heard it said in church that God is in control. But what does that mean? Does that mean that everything that happens
is what God wants to happen? Was His
anger here only rhetorical? Some have
said that if God ordains the end, He will ordain the means. So consequently if the desired end does not
take place, it must not have been His will at this time, because He did not
ordain the means.
I have often heard of faith for healing as a gift from God. If a person does not have faith for healing,
it must be because God did not will to give it to them. Yet here was a case where God had brought His
people to the land of His inheritance and they did not have the faith to
receive it. And God was angry with them
for that response. And that whole
generation wandered for 40 years until they all died off.
Was this what God intended for them?
Was this God’s mysterious will that we often hear about, where for
reasons unknown to us, God doesn’t give us what we hoped for, because there is
something better for us, but we never know what it is, either because we have
died or we try to see some good in our wanderings?
Today we don’t have God’s visible presence or His audible voice to clearly
indicate to us His will and His emotions.
We generally use circumstances or maybe a verse in the Bible to tell us
what God wants for us at any particular time.
When faced with something
impossible, we might ask for God to remove the obstacle, but when that does not
appear to be happening, we either retreat or try another course. We believe that either we misunderstood what
God wanted or that this was not His time.
There is a small, subtle, but important factor here that I believe makes
all the difference. The Israelites came
back to this place 40 years later to finally go in and conquer the land. They did not wait there for God to remove the
obstacles before they decided what God’s will was for them. They did not think that God’s will was
anything less than complete and full victory over their enemies. They did not see this as something that was
easy and without any effort or responsibility on their part. It took great courage and great strength to
resist the temptation to fear. They did
not look at the circumstances to see what God’s will was, but having God’s will
clearly in their minds, they were to face their enemies, steadfastly holding to
God’s promises and listening carefully to the voice and Word of God to do all
that He wanted them to do.
But back to the original question.
God wanted them to take possession of the land. They didn’t do it the first time. Was that God’s will for them? No.
Can we say, any of us, that we are doing all that we should to be good
Christians? That we are praying enough,
giving thanks enough, worshipping enough?
If it is true that we could always do more than we are in terms of
becoming all that God would want us to be, does it not follow then that there
will always be more things that God wants to give us or do through us than what
we will ever know in this life. Joshua
was a man who followed God and led the people into their Promised Land. When he was old, God told him: “There is still very much more land to be
possessed.”[3]
So while on
the one hand, we may see our lives as being in the will of God, maybe in terms
of who we marry or our career choice and the present location of that job, is
it not also true that we all have had thoughts like, if only I could pray more,
or spend more time reading His Word, or in worship, or meditation, or just
being alone with God, then I would know God more and live a life that is more
godly or more Spirit-filled or more fruitful.
On the one hand, we may feel like we are doing the best we can. We don’t know how we can do anything
differently or better. Yet we still
recognize that we are still far from what we know we should be.
We can
always be more loving, more patient, more kind.
But when it comes to faith, somehow many of us see this as a gift that
God either gives to us or not. If we
don’t have it, then God must not have wanted us to have it. But that simply isn’t true. Just like we have to learn how to be more
loving, and yes we need God’s help in doing that, and we have to learn how to
be more patient and kind, faith is also something that we have to develop. Faith grows.
It grows as we use it, as we act on what we believe and we soon learn to
obey and then believe for larger and larger things.
Here in
this passage God was angry that His people were not able to believe in Him to
deliver them from their enemies. And as
a result of their being unable, or unwilling
to believe in God, they did not enter the land that God had promised to
them and that God wanted them to enter. Nobody said that this would be easy, but that’s why we
have the Bible: to show us again and again that this is the pattern. We have these great and wonderful promises
from God and then we find that there are all kinds of giants keeping us from
receiving them. And we pray that God
removes them, and He doesn’t. We can
conclude that God doesn’t really mean for us to have these things, at least not
yet. Or we go ahead and face these
giants and defeat them. Far too often I
think we see the giants and we ask God to remove them. And when He doesn’t, we conclude that God
must not have wanted them to be removed.
No, He wanted you to go face the giant like a conquering warrior.
When I began writing this book, I actually started writing three
books. I didn’t know which book would
sell first. One of the others was about
how the history of the nation Israel is a parallel to the Christisn life
today. After all, we are told that all
these things in the Old Testament were written as examples for us today. So what would this story represent?. The Promised Land couldn’t be a metaphor for
heaven, because there were wars and giants there. But what then?
It represents all the promises of God for us, the Spirit-filled,
victorious life . The life that God
wants all of us to have, but unfortunately so few of us do. And why?
Because the land is filled with giants, and we are afraid to believe
God.
That entire generation died in the wilderness, because they could not,
would not, believe God. Today we are a
lot nicer than those who wrote the Bible.
If this or something like this were to happen today, we would say that
God closed the door, that His timing was not right, that we would receive this
land in heaven, that God has something better for us, that God had reasons that
we will never know this side of heaven, that this wandering in the wilderness
will bring us closer to God, that if we had gone in to the land, we would have
taken God for granted and it is in the wilderness that we learn daily
dependence on God, that our motives for wanting the land were not pure, that
the land was just a picturesque, figurative, hyperbolic representation of the
land that we should not have taken literally, that there is another, a better
land, waiting for us somewhere else later in life, that if He gave it to us
now, we would not grow as much in character, that it is not the land that is
important, but trusting God in the barren places, that the land is physical and
our blessings and the more important blessings are the spiritual ones.
Life can be scary at times. Out of
nowhere something can happen that can shake us to our roots. It can be an illness, a loss of a job, a
broken marriage, a lawsuit, or any of a number of things. Life is not easy. Some may have things easier than others for a
while, but that may only make them ill-prepared for the junk when it
comes. And it will. Hopefully when that times comes, you will
have learned the will and plan of God for your life, and you will have seen His
deliverance and care in the past.
Because that challenge to your life will make you question everything
that you have come to believe about God..
It will try to deny you the very things that you have long believed God
wants for you, whether a long life, a fruitful ministry or career, or a blessed
family.
You will pray that God will remove this problem. and nothing will
happen.. At least nothing that you can
see. And you have to decide what you
will do. Believe that you were mistaken,
that you didn’t really know what God wanted, or you persist in faith and go
forward, confident that what God had promised, He will indeed do, that these
promises are for this life and not some happier place later on.
Did you notice? Twelve spies were
sent to spy out the land. Ten of them
did not believe that God would give them the land. Do you suppose the odds are any better
today? If you and your church, or you
and everybody you know had been there at Kedesh-Barrnes with those Israelites,
how do you think you and they would have responded? Would you have believed God to face the
giants? What about your friends? Your church?
I believe this book can help you get ready for that time. That time is coming. I believe too many of us let it come to us
unaware and unprepared. Like Joshua and
Caleb, when it comes, you may find
yourself alone in what you believe.
But don’t be surprised if that happens.
That’s why we have the Bible, to show us the patterns.
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