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.

Acts 17:16-34 “Poets and Philosophers”

It used to be that people knew their Bible. Not so much anymore. A generation ago, at least here in America, people grew up going to Sunday School and learning the Bible stories. But something happened, they got busy, they got seduced away, they saw hypocrisy in the church or perhaps they just liked to do things that they knew God and the others in their church would frown upon. So they quit going to church. And they had kids. And their kids didn’t grow up going to Sunday School, either. And we now live in a culture that is in some ways post-Christian.

That’s a scary culture and world to live in. It sounds kinda defeatist to say, too. But it is, on the whole, where our culture is. They’ve moved past Christianity. And they didn’t even slow down to wave goodbye. And here we are, living as Christians in a post-Christian world trying to figure out how to be relevant, how to make people care, how to bring people to God. And then we try to do things to attract people that used to work, things that made sense in a culture that valued and supported Christianity. And these things don’t work anymore.

So, today we’re going to look at Paul at Mars Hill. We’re going to see how he reached out to a culture that didn’t value the Bible, that didn’t even know the teachings of the Bible, we’ll see how in many ways he failed. Most people scoffed at his teachings… but some believed and a church in Athens was born.

Let us open in prayer.

I. Babbler

Today’s scripture says that Paul was staying in Athens not because it was on his list of places to preach. Rather, he was there waiting for some friends to join him. But as he waited he looked around at the culture and he found his heart to be heavy about it. He saw all the idols and it made him sick. And he wanted to do something about it.

I remember when I was a junior in High School our choir did a three day tour around the area. It was quite the event. I was a bit of a music nerd, and therefore one of the few people who took the musical part of the trip seriously. But everyone had a great time. We went up to Canada. We rode a ferry. We sang at a number of Christian schools in the area. It was quite the thing. But it also sent me into a deep depression. Why? Because I found myself repulsed by the antics of some classmates and schoolmates. Perhaps the chaperones weren’t doing their job like they should. Perhaps I was just really sensitive to what was going on around me. But whatever it was, it made me sick. Guys were trying to sneak into the girls rooms at night at the hotels. The conversations on the bus were all about things that I am not comfortable talking about from the pulpit or anywhere else, for that matter. It made me sick. It horrified me. I couldn’t believe the depravity that I saw around me. Even though none of it was directed at me, I found myself becoming physically ill by it. It wasn’t that I was judging those around me. I was finding myself hurt by their antics in a strange way.

I share this because that is precisely what Paul was going through when he came to Athens. He saw people worshiping idols and he was hurt by this and felt the need to do something about it. So he began to speak at the synagogue and in the town square, as he would usually do. But something different happened here. Instead of the normal response, he got people wondering what he was babbling about. He was preaching from scripture. He was sharing about Jesus’ resurrection and the people heard him and couldn’t understand him. Basically, they didn’t understand the religious language he was speaking.

Because we are living in a culture where people don’t know their Bibles, because we are living in a culture where the things of God are not lifted up as priorities, we find the same thing happening. If we start talking about sin and getting saved, they’re going to be looking at us and wonder what we’re babbling about. Or worse, they’re going to misinterpret what it is we are talking about altogether. If we want to reach the lost, if we want to share the good news, the gospel with those around us who haven’t heard it, we need to be sure that we aren’t babblers.

II. Arguing to the Scripture

When I was in High School I learned a formula for leading someone to Christ. This formula consisted of reading a couple Bible verses, mostly from the book of Romans and explaining that: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23). God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9). Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1).

I spent a fair amount of time sitting with children and walking them through this and asking them to pray with me. And, unfortunately, I found myself, like Paul, babbling just a bit. One time, actually the first time I tried to walk through this with a little girl, she was wanting me to pray for her sick brother with her. But I was so focused on getting through the road to salvation, that I totally missed what she was asking me for.

I was doing what I do every Sunday in my sermons. I was arguing from scripture. This works well with people who accept the Bible, who know the scriptures, who believe that the Word of God has something to say to them. That’s why my sermons always start with scripture and preach from it. This is where we get our Truth and it is what we teach from. As the Covenant Affirmation states, the Bible is the only perfect rule for faith, conduct and living.

But this isn’t the starting point that Paul started with at Mars Hill. He realized that he didn’t hold scripture in common with those around him. And so he couldn’t start there. Instead of arguing his point from scripture, he did something else that is a bit harder to do. He argued to scripture. This wasn’t about taking scripture or truth out of the equation. No, it was about starting where the listeners were and bringing them along until they could discover the scripture.

So Paul started where the people on Mars Hill were. He started with the very thing that distressed him so much, that made him sick. He started with their idolatry. But he used it. Instead of pointing out to them the error of their idolatry, he complemented them on it, “I see that you are a very religious people.” He used their poets and their philosophers to make his point. He didn’t quote the Bible to them, he quoted their own writings. I’m sure he didn’t think much of their own writings, but he used them anyway because that’s where they were.

The question we need to ask ourselves is who are the poets and philosophers that our culture listens to today. When we talked about this on Wednesday night, there was a bit of agreement: the music industry, the entertainment industry, sports figures, the media. These are the voices that are being listened to. When Whitney Houston died last Saturday, the world responded to it. People have the television and radio on nonstop and listen to personalities and voices all day long. Now, we have a choice. We can wallow in our wish that this weren’t the case. We can complain that society has left its Christian heritage. Or we can find ways to connect with that society and lead it back to Jesus. This is how Paul decided to face the difficulty. And this is how we can too.

III. Making Friends

We sometimes think that we need people to become good Christian folks and then we’ll welcome them into our fold. We sometimes believe that when people get their faith and their actions all straightened out, when they give up their sins and become the good, moral people that we like to hang around, then we’ll welcome them in to be one of us. But this isn’t how it works. This isn’t what Paul did and this won’t work in today’s world. You see, we are in many ways much like Athens back then. We have people living around us, in our community, in our culture, who have no conception of what the Bible says. They have no conception of right and wrong. We could just look down on them and dismiss them as the lost, or we could find those connection points, find their poets and philosophers, and see how they might lead to the gospel. Instead of complaining about the voices they follow, we can find ourselves connecting with those voices and dialoguing with them, and discovering where they bring us to God’s truth. And when they do, follow that path, take that journey with someone.

Here’s my challenge for you. And it’s a hard one. Develop relationships with non-believers. Make friends with people who aren’t followers of Christ. Relationships and friendships are what draw people in to church in today’s day and age. I talked with a couple church planters and pastors of very young churches while I was at Midwinter and they all said the same thing. It’s not strangers that come in to church. It’s not flyers that bring people in, either. It’s once someone has connected, they see something worthwhile and they invite their friends, and their friends invite their friends. But this isn’t going to happen if none of our friends aren’t Christian. So let’s go make those friends. It’s not the last step, they’ll have a journey to go on. They’ll need to be led to scripture, and then to God. But it’s a good first step; one that we can begin today.