Psalm 146 "A Post Election Reminder"

So, this morning I am going to spend some time talking politics. As all of you do, I have good friends, good Christian friends, on both sides of the aisle. I have friends who love the Lord and put his kingdom first who were celebrating on Tuesday night, and I have friends who love the Lord and put his kingdom first who were wondering how things could get any worse on Tuesday night.

I also mentioned last week that there are a number of churches around the country that came together Tuesday night, not to watch the poll numbers, not to wait for the returns to come in, but to join together in Holy Communion, reminding themselves and making a statement to the world that what unites us as Christians is greater than that which divides us politically. I believe that our annual soup and pie supper on election night at this church is kind of a similar event. No, we aren’t celebrating Communion together. But we are coming together in God’s house and leaving our politics at the door as we fellowship with one another and share meal together. And we don’t limit this to ourselves. We invite the whole community in to this fellowship, into this meal. We are taking a stand and reminding ourselves that we are united by Christ and not divided as it sometimes feels we are.

So today we read Psalm 146. It is a psalm of praise. But more than that, it is a reminder of where our trust lies, where our hope can be placed. This psalm is a word of comfort and hope to my conservative friends as they are reminded that it is God who is in control and it is he to whom we place our fealty. It is a word of caution to my liberal or progressive friends as they are reminded that we aren’t to put our hope and trust in earthly saviors.

Let us open in prayer…

1. Trust Not in Princes

So, today’s scripture spends some time telling us where to put our trust. Actually, before it gets there it starts by telling us where not to put our trust. It starts out pretty strong, also. Don’t put your trust in princes or in men. It is easy to see the political message here. It is easy to see this as a reminder that our hope is not in people. But this is something that is much harder to live into. After being told over and over again that this election that we just had was the most important decision that we as a country would make in our whole lifetime. After being told by both parties that if we chose the “wrong” candidate, everything we believed in, everything we held as important, would be taken from us. We’ve basically been living in a world, politically, where we have been told that we are to put our trust in princes. And the truth is that this isn’t only a political thing. The same is true in so many areas of our lives. We are always looking for people to save us. We are always being told that we need to rely on someone else or something else to save us. Better clothes will make us feel more comfortable about ourselves. A nicer car will help us find happiness and joy. Medicines that they advertise on TV will allow us to feel younger and healthier and able to do more than we thought we were capable of. Advertisement, both political and otherwise is all about selling us on our need for a savior. But the advertisements all point us to the wrong saviors.

I remember being a teen. I don’t know about all of you, it may have been a while ago for you, but some of the feelings of the teenage life are still fresh in my mind a quarter century later. I remember being very self-conscious. I remember being socially awkward and not having much self-confidence. And I remember watching commercials that told me that if I wore the right cologne the girls would like me. And so, I found myself buying this horrible stuff that I thought would save me, would cure me of my social awkwardness. Of course it did no such thing. Cologne could not be my savior.

Looking back, I laugh. Cause it seems absolutely ridiculous to me today to think that cologne could save me from myself. Yet I did. But the same thing is true today. We expect things and people to save us, to save this world, to save this country and they can’t. So the psalmist tells us that we should not look to princes for our salvation. We shouldn’t look to people. The mighty fall. Those who we think are invulnerable show their vulnerability. Those who seem undefeatable end up being defeated. Good is not always the strongest.

I’ve talked about this scripture in the context of politicians and advertisements, but there is someone else that you need to realize cannot save you as well. And that is yourself.

The psalmist reminds us why this is. “When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.” The things of this world are temporary. The greatest plans made by the greatest people in this world will not last. Plus, there is just so much that is outside the control of us and our would-be saviors. A sports star who seems undefeatable ends up getting injured and their career is never the same.

When I was a kid the Seattle Seahawks were starting to try to build a new team, trying to make a name for themselves. They’d had two years without making it to the playoffs and they knew they needed something bold. They hired a loud-mouthed rookie linebacker, Brian Bozworth: “The Boz”. He flew into his first practice with the team on a helicopter. He had the biggest contract that Seattle had ever given up to that point. His trash talking and over-the-top personality rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way. But, I’ve gotta say, he was smart about it. He at one point had shirts made up that said “Ban the Boz” and when Seattle was playing Denver these shirts were sold to Denver fans and the stadium was full of them. The fans had no idea that Boz was actually making money off of them. But the Seahawks had put their trust in the Boz and discovered that he didn’t do much for them. His second year he had a shoulder injury that pretty much ended his career, though he made it into the second game of his third season before he fully retired from the sport. As we look back at the Boz, though, he became more of a joke to us Seattle fans than anything else.

But the fact is that our human heroes will never live up to our hopes and dreams. Their plans will die with them, or often long before them. The mighty will fall and we cannot allow ourselves to put our trust in them, even though everything in our world tells us that we should.

2. Hope in the Lord

So, if we’re not putting our trust in people, if we’re not expecting a politician or a movie star, a sports player or even ourselves to save us; then what do we put our trust in? Someone whose plans are greater than ours. Someone who will never fail. Someone who cannot be surprised by events outside his control: “Blessed are those whose help is in the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” When we look for someone to help us, the one we can look to with absolute trust, with absolute hope, is God.

The psalm then explains to us why it is that we can look to him. It explains what it is about his character that makes it possible to trust in him, what it is that allows us to rely on him. And the psalm does it in a way that is very poetic, that is very powerful. It is almost a shame to analyze it, it’s almost a shame to take it apart and look at it closely, because it takes away the beauty of the psalm, the poetry found there. But at the same time this is a list of attributes of God that helps us to understand why we can put our trust in him. It’s a good list to have before us.

First, God is the creator of this world. He is the creator of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. Think about this for a minute. As you look at the world around you. Everything you see on this world, everything you see in the heavens, everything was created by God. Even the sea, which in the day of the psalmist was seen as chaos and destruction. Even the sea was created by God and everything in it. So, God can be trusted because he has made this world.

But the psalmist goes on to tell us that God remains faithful forever. He created this world and he has promised to be faithful to this world. He made this promise not to give up on this world he created after the flood, when he gave us the rainbow to remind us of this faithfulness, to remind us of this promise.

The psalmist continues. He upholds the cause of the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets the prisoners free, gives sight to the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, loves the righteous, watches over the foreigner, the immigrant, the outsider, sustains the orphan and the widow and frustrates the plans and the ways of the wicked.

We see here an active God. We see here a God who didn’t just start up this world, create it and wind it up like a clock and walk away to gaze from a distance at the world he created. Instead we see a God who actively works for the good of his people. We see a God who takes an interest in the things of this world, a God who wants justice and peace in a world bent against these things.

When things seem hopeless, when the problems faced by you or those around you seem to be beyond your ability, don’t trust the people who say they can fix them. They can try, but they don’t have what it takes. Instead turn to God. Allow God to work, put your hope in him. Allow him to be your help and the receiver of your trust. Our allegiance is first and foremost to God’s kingdom, and he is the one that will bring us salvation.

Numbers 23:27-24:11 “Blessings or Curses”

This church building was built in the mid 50s. And it is the style that most churches were built in the 50s. It’s the upside-down ark architecture. Churches that have been built or remodeled in the last decade or two look very differently. They look like meeting rooms or even theaters. There’s not as much obvious religious architecture in them. The narthex is much more like a lobby than a narthex… there’s often a coffee shop and a fountain… making the church look more like a mall than a place of worship.

I don’t want to get down on the modern architecture of churches here. There’s a reason for it. These churches are being built to appeal to young people who did not grow up in the church, and therefore these churches take their cues from the kind of spaces that young people might be comfortable in. And, unfortunately, the mall is perhaps the holiest place our society has to offer. Here’s a weird fact. God to a mall, go near the food court. Guess what you’ll find there. Probably some sort of tree or some sort of fountain. It’s almost universal in malls. And it’s actually religious. The fountain represents living water, the tree represents the tree of life. Go into modern church buildings, especially the huge ones, and you won’t find a cross, but you’ll find a fountain, you’ll find a tree. They are buying into this same religious imagery.

But not that I’ve attacked modern church architecture, I want to attack the architecture of our church. And, again, don’t get me wrong. I love this sanctuary. But it also says something about us. Like I said, it’s the upside down ark motif. When this church was built, the common understanding of what church was was that we were a place of safety. The world around us was falling apart, turning away from God. But the true believers could find a safe home. They could come in to the ark and be protected from all the craziness outside. They could find safety here. This feels pretty good, doesn’t it? It is nice to have a place where we’re protected, where we’re safe from the sins of the world around us. But there are dangers here as well. When we see the church as a place to protect us from the world, we no longer see ourselves as having a place in that world. We no longer connect with the people outside the ark, and we become irrelevant to them. Today, as we look again at Balaam, we’re going to see that we need to move outside the ark to reach the world with God’s love once again.

Let us open in prayer.

I. Context

Last week we started to look at one of those weirdoes of the Bible, one of those kooky characters that we often skip over because his story is so weird.

Did you know that Balaam is actually mentioned outside the Bible? There are actually writings from the 8th century BC that come from east of the Jordan River that contain prophecies that Balaam made.

If you read Numbers 22-24 just by themselves you might end up with a somewhat positive reading of Balaam. He obviously knows the One True God. He seems to be a prophet or a seer who is clearly in communication with God. It is interesting that when Balak comes to him and asks him to curse the people of Israel, he never tells him who they are. Rather it’s “a people wandering out of Egypt”, almost as if he’s trying to trick Balaam into cursing a people who should really be on his side. Yes, the whole event with the donkey that we talked about last week puts Balaam in a somewhat bad light, but overall, this story tells of a prophet of God who proclaims God’s blessing over the people of Israel.

But when you read the story in the context of the rest of the Bible, you see a slightly different story emerge. Later in Numbers 31 we are told that Balaam was giving advice to the Midianites on how to lure the Israelites away from God. In Deuteronomy 23 we are told that the sacrifices that Balaam had put up were there to try to curse Israel… that Balaam had every intent to curse Israel, but God wouldn’t allow him to. And in the New Testament as well we see Balaam mentioned and reviled as someone who let his greed get the best of him, who put financial gain above following God.

And so it’s important to see the story of Balaam in context of the rest of the Bible. It’s important to see that Balaam is not a saint, and perhaps can be put alongside Jonah as an unwilling prophet. Or even worse, can be described as a pagan diviner or seer who God chose to use.

II. Curses

Despite all this, I want us to put ourselves in Balaam’s shoes for a minute. Let’s get past the question of whether he was an unwilling prophet or a pagan diviner. Rather, let us see him as someone who wanted to curse a group of people who God instead wanted to bless. Think about that for a moment. Think of the people we might want to curse.

As someone once said, “Vengeance is mine, sayith the Lord, but I just want to be about the Lord’s business.” We often find ourselves wanting to be about vengeance. We often find ourselves wanting to watch people or society fail. And maybe, even have a part in that. When we look at the world around us, the “non-Christian” world that is turned so obviously away from God, we might find ourselves wanting to speak prophetically against them. Our kids go off to college and they come back liberal. Hollywood presents a view of life on our TVs each night that makes it seem like the most important thing in the world is to make yourself feel good, which is just not a Christian virtue any way you try to make it one. When we see this, we may find ourselves wanting to be that prophetic voice as a church telling them that they are wrong and evil and going to hell.

It may be easy to see all the problems in our culture, all the things pulling people away from God, and get all prophetic and declare that this world is going to end badly. But being prophetic isn’t always about complaining and cursing. What Balaam needed to learn was that being prophetic can also be about blessing. Balaam went out and began to proclaim a curse upon the people of Israel. People who had turned from God again and again and probably deserved it. But what came out of his mouth wasn’t a curse but a blessing. And he tried again and again he blessed. We are told that the first two times he was actually trying to curse the people. He was using divination and magic and doing all he could to give Balak exactly what he wanted. But to no avail. Out of his mouth came blessings. By the third time, by the time we get to the scripture we read this morning Balaam is no longer trying to curse. He gives in to God’s message and he becomes it.

You see, when we set ourselves as Christians against a society that we live in, when we live our lives trying to curse the society around us, we aren’t able to share God’s love with them. When we do this we aren’t able to have a redemptive presence among them. And yet that has often been the relationship between the church and society.

Last month I encouraged you to make friends who aren’t Christians. To spend time getting to know them, finding out what is important to them, learning to love them. You may not approve of everything they do. You may find yourself very uncomfortable with some of the choices they make, some of the sins they commit so very openly. But don’t automatically speak curses upon them because of their sins. Don’t be another judgmental Christian who comes across as holier than thou. Instead, find a way to be a blessing to them. Find a way to share with them God’s great love for them.

So often we picture God as trying to keep as many people out of heaven as possible. He’s up there, just looking for an excuse to exclude people from heaven. We may feel this way. Those who haven’t accepted Jesus, but who believe in God probably do feel this way. If that were the case, God wouldn’t have sent his son to die on the cross for us. If that were the case, Jesus wouldn’t make any sense at all. Let me be clear. I’m not talking about easy grace here. I’m not talking about everyone getting to heaven no matter what they believe. What I am talking about is the idea that God loves this world he created. God wants what is best for the world. And he wants to be able to bless the world and share eternal life with everyone he can.

And here’s where things get a little crazy. God chose a messed up prophet/seer named Balaam to bless the people of Israel. God chose a messed up nation named Israel, that never seemed to get the concept of what it meant to be faithful to God, to bless the world. God chose a messed up Pharisee named Saul, who was persecuting Christians to be his greatest evangelist. God chose a messed up fugitive from Egypt who was living life on the lamb as a shepherd named Moses to lead the people of Israel to the Promised Land. And God has chosen to use us, a messed up group of Christians, a messed up church, to be a blessing to the world around us. Let’s be that blessing.

Numbers 22:21-25 "Balaam's Donkey"

In college I had the opportunity to go to a concert of one of my favorite Contemporary Christian singers, Rich Mullins. This was only a couple years before his death in 1997 in a car accident. At the concert, between songs, he would take time to talk about different things. His message was definitely one that had Christians in mind, but he also didn’t want us to take ourselves too seriously. One of the things that he said that really stuck with me was that the Bible is full of weirdoes.

He liked to point out all the weird characters and events that we find in the Bible. Sometimes we just skip over the weird or disturbing things we find in there, other times we allow our familiarity with the Bible to keep us from realizing how weird some things we find in there are. The Christmas story seems normal to us because we hear it every year in December. But it was not a normal, ordinary story when it was first told. The name Samaritan has exactly the opposite meaning in our world that it had in Jesus’ day. It is too much linked nowadays with the word “good.”

Well, today and next week I want to spend some time looking at one of those weirdoes from the Bible, one of those strange stories that make you scratch your head and wonder why God works the way he does. I think we can learn something from those ordinary, messed up, somewhat kooky people that we find in scripture because then we realize that even though we are ordinary, messed up and somewhat kooky, God can work in our lives the same way he worked in theirs. So, welcome to the world of Balaam and his donkey.

Let us open in prayer.

I. Balak’s Reqest

Now, to properly understand the story of Balaam and his donkey and see it as more than just a tall tale or a strange Old Testament story, we need to see what was happening and what led to it. Basically, you have the people of Israel, they have been wandering through the wilderness, through the desert for forty years and now they are starting to move towards the Promised Land. Their wandering is beginning to come to an end and they are making their way to the land that God has prepared for them. But to get there they need to travel through some other countries like Edom, Ammon and Moab. They actually tried to make peace with a couple of these peoples in order to cross through their land on the way to their destination, but the nations were scared of them and made war on them. And the book of Numbers tells us that God was with them and they defeated these nations, and conquered their lands. Well, one of these countries was Moab, which was right on the other side of the Jordan from the Promised Land. And the king of Moab was a guy named Balak. And Balak was a bit wiser than the other kings around him. He knew that Israel’s victories weren’t just about their strength, and he knew that he needed something more than strength to defeat them. So he sent for a prophet, a guy named Balaam, who lived over in Iraq.

Now Balaam is an interesting guy. He wasn’t an Israelite. And yet he was a prophet of the Lord. We see a few of these pop up before Israel is founded as a nation. It is amazing to realize that God spoke to people in the midst of their pagan settings and would bring the truth to them. This is hope for us today, as we realize that God can speak truth in the pagan settings we see around the world.

But Balaam received these messengers from Balak and told them that he’d need to check with God about whether to come with them. He then prayed and received an answer from God not to go. So he sent the messengers home and that should be the end of the story. But it isn’t.

You see, Balak sends for him again, this time offering a great reward to Balaam if he comes. And at first it seems like Balaam is still on the right page. He says he will not disobey God. But then he says he’ll ask God again. You see, this is where everything goes wrong for him. He had asked God to speak to him, God had, he knew his answer. But he didn’t like the answer and went back to God again asking again.

How many times do we find ourselves doing this same thing? How many times do we find ourselves bargaining with God or trying to get our way? How many times do we find ourselves ignoring God’s answer to us because it’s not the answer we want.

God doesn’t want Balaam to go, but he lets him. And he makes it clear that Balaam has to do exactly what he tells him.

II. Balaam’s Donkey

And now we finally get to the story as we read it this morning. Balaam was traveling along the path on his donkey and the donkey saw that there was an angel on the path in front of him. And this was not cute little cuddly angel… they never are. This angel was fierce and was about to strike Balaam down. But the donkey pulled off the road to avoid the angel, to save Balaam. Balaam didn’t see the angel and therefore found himself angry at the donkey, and he beat the donkey because it kept going off the road.

Here again, we can find ourselves in the story. How often have you punished someone for doing something that was actually good for you? How often have you in your own stubbornness refused to see what those around you see and been unfair or judging of them in the midst of that? We can learn from Balaam and his donkey that perhaps we need to listen to those around us. Sometimes they can see more clearly than we can. Sometimes they might know something that we don’t know. Sometimes they might not have their emotions clouding their judgment like ours are.

Here is where the story gets fun. The donkey opens its mouth and begins to speak to Balaam. That’s right. His donkey begins to speak to him. The donkey calls him out on his meanness. “Why have you beat me?” it asks. And Balaam’s response is even worse now that he has someone to yell at. Here we have the first recorded incident of road rage. “I’d kill you right now if I had a sword.” “You’ve made me look foolish.”

Balaam was more worried about what the messengers with him thought of him than his donkey. Again, back to our lives. Have you ever found yourself treating a stranger better than your own family? Have you ever found yourself worrying so much about what someone you barely know thinks of you that you treat those who know you the best in a horrible way? There’s something messed up about us, it’s a part of that sin nature inside us, where we worry about our image, we worry about what people will think, and then those who we are closest to, those who care for us the most get what’s left over. Not good.

And now back to Balaam and his donkey. He’s just screamed at it and told it that he wishes he could kill it because it made him look like a fool. All of a sudden Balaam’s eyes are opened and he now sees the whole picture. He now sees what the donkey had already seen. He sees that what he thought was making him look foolish was actually saving his life. And Balaam here realizes the error of his ways, the danger of his path, and repents.

We too can do what Balaam did. We can repent, acknowledge our own crooked, foolish path, and realize that we don’t need to stay on it. God desires to be our path. Jesus tells us that he is the path, the way. We don’t need to be following our wants or our hopes, but instead can be following that path that God has put us on. And to do this, all we need to do is join Balaam in acknowledging our pride, our willful way. And we too can submit to God as Balaam did. “I will go where you lead me.”

III. One More Lesson

Back to Rich Mullins. He used to say that we can learn something from Balaam’s donkey. He used to say that God used a donkey to speak. And God speaks through donkeys (except he used another word for it) today. So when we feel that God is speaking through us to the world around us, we don’t want to get too full of ourselves. And when we meet someone and realize that they aren’t what we hope, what we expect… they’re actually a bit like donkeys themselves, we shouldn’t dismiss them too quickly… for God spoke to Balaam through a donkey, and he just may speak through a donkey today.

Numbers 13:1-3, 25-33; 14:1-4 “Back to Egypt”

In high school I was scared to death that I would miss the rapture. I don’t know if you all know what the rapture is about, but it is a belief that as we approach the end times, Jesus will take all the believers up to him in a flash, in the blink of an eye. And all the non-believers will remain here on earth to experience seven years of horror and destruction.

Belief in the rapture and focus on it is really big in certain Christian circles. The Left Behind series (which we have in our church library) is all about the rapture and what comes after it. There’s a group of non-believers who have put together a pet care program and have set it up so people can pay some money and know that if the rapture happens their pets will be taken care of. There’s a video you can get to give to your loved ones if you disappear to explain to them what has just happened to you.

Well, when I was in high school this was a central part of my understanding of Christianity, and I found myself fearing that I possibly had done something wrong in the way I accepted Jesus as my Savior, and so my parents would be late getting home from work and I’d be home by myself, and I’d worry that maybe the rapture had happened and I had missed it. I’d try to call a friend to make sure they were still around, and there would be no answer, and I’d worry that maybe I’d missed the rapture.

It happened to me at lunch on Thursday again. I went home for lunch, went in the house, saw the kids playing in the living room (it was a snow day), but didn’t see Lisa. I asked if Bronte knew where Mommy was, she didn’t. I ran upstairs and she wasn’t there either. I looked around called out to her, no answer. She had vanished. And for a brief moment, I wondered, did I miss the rapture? Of course not, she had run down to the basement to get something.

But sometimes we let our fears get the best of us. Sometimes we allow ourselves to be ruled by those very fears. Sometimes we decide to do the wrong thing, the easy thing, the lazy thing because of those fears. Sometimes, because of our fears, we decide to go back to Egypt, back to slavery instead of entering the Promised Land that God has prepared for us.

Let us open in prayer.

I. The Book of Numbers

Numbers is a lousy name for a book. Unless you’re a huge fan of math, you’ll look at that title and decide you really want nothing to do with it. It gets worse if you actually open the book and begin in chapter one. It starts with a census as it lists out the people from each tribe of Israel. So you skip ahead a bit because this is pretty boring stuff and you come to Numbers 26. Oh look, another census. More names and numbers. And these two censuses (censai?) are where the name of Numbers comes from. I actually like the Hebrew name for the book much better: it’s Bemidbar, or “In the Wilderness”. This is a much better description of what the book of Numbers is really about. It is about the traveling of the Israelite people from Mount Sinai (after they received the Law of Moses) to the edge of the Promised Land. And, really, sadly, the book is about their failure during their time in the wilderness. There is a central story in the book of Numbers. And that central story is a crisis of faith that the people of Israel have.

Actually, the people of Israel go through all sorts of crises in their time in the wilderness and we see these crises play out again and again. And sometimes it seems like it is the same problem they have again and again. So much so that you wonder why it is that they aren’t catching on. Again and again they complain, they grumble, they tell Moses that they are afraid that they’re going to die and they want him to lead them in a different way. Again and again they see a situation before them that seems impossible and they decide that they should just give up, but God pulls through for them. They complain because they have no food, so God sends manna, or bread from heaven. They complain about no water so God gives them a fountain from a rock. They complain because they don’t like Moses leadership style. They just complained about their hardship at times. And in today’s reading, the center of all this complaining, they gave up their faith in God and decided to go back to slavery.

Think about that for a moment. God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. God had met them at Mount Sinai and given them the law. God had provided for them throughout their journey through the desert. And now they had the opportunity to go in to the land that God had promised them and take it as their own. But they didn’t want to. They let their fears get the best of them. And so they decided to pick a new leader to replace Moses, a leader who would do for them what they thought was best, a leader who would take them back to Egypt. And this is where I think we come in contact with this scripture, with this story.

II. Going back

You see, I think we often find ourselves wanting to go back to Egypt. It happens in our church when we look back at the good old days and wish we could have things like they were. It happens when we find ourselves complaining about the worship style, wishing we could still sing the old hymns every Sunday. It happens when we find ourselves saying, “We’ve never done it that way before.” It happens when we look at our church and assume that the glory days are all behind us. It happens when we think that we don’t have a chance.

It happens at our homes and at our jobs as well. It happens when a woman returns to a man who has beat her because it’s safer than the unknown. It happens when someone gives in to temptation or addiction knowing that it’s going to lead them down a destructive path, knowing they don’t want to go where it is leading them, but not finding themselves strong enough to stand against it.

Going back to Egypt is the weak answer. It is the easy answer. It is where we will go again and again as long as we are left to our fear, as long as we are trying to do it on our own. The Israelites had reason to fear. The people in the land were large, they might not have all been giants, but they were a strong people. The cities were fortified and would not be easy to defeat. The Israelites had every right to wonder at their own abilities to defeat these people and take this land. Sometimes our fears are well founded as well. We know that the world is against us. We know that our chances of success are minimal. But then Caleb and Joshua stand up and speak the good news.

III. Hope to Come

We already heard Caleb’s words. He didn’t say that it would be easy. He didn’t claim that there were no obstacles before the Israelites. No, he admitted all the obstacles they faced. But he said that even though the obstacles were there, they could do it. It’s because he was looking at the right thing. He wasn’t looking at the obstacles. He was looking at the God who was so much greater than them. Caleb and Joshua speak up again in chapter 14:7-9 “The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.”

The people of Israel chose not to listen to Caleb and Joshua. They instead listened to their fears and they suffered the consequences. They wandered around in the wilderness for another 40 years before they could enter the land. Out of all the people in Israel that day, two adults were around to actually enter the land forty years later: Caleb and Joshua. The rest died out in the wilderness. The rest allowed their fears to keep them from the land flowing with milk and honey.

I want you to hear the good news that Joshua and Caleb brought to the people: It will be hard! Life won’t be easy if you choose to trust in God and step out in faith. But God will go with you, and he will help you through those hard times. And you will not only survive, but you will thrive. The ten spies who brought back a bad report said that they felt like grasshoppers in the eyes of the people in the Promised Land. Joshua and Caleb said that we would devour those people we are scared of. Grasshoppers may seem small, they may seem weak, but when you’re in the midst of a swarm of them, when they come through an area as a plague, they do devour everything. Let us come together as God’s people so that we can stand up to those things we are afraid of. Let us as brothers and sisters in Christ have each other’s backs so that we can conquer the fears that overcome us. And let us listen to the two instead of the ten. Let us know that our God is more powerful than any fears we might have.