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.
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