Sermon for Sunday November 11th, 2007

The Faith to See it Through by Grant van Boeschoten

Numbers 13:16-14:25

The Faith to See it Through
Grant van Boeschoten
November 4, 2007

I have heard it said that you cannot determine a man’s greatness by his wealth and ability, but rather by what it takes to discourage him.

I hope that I am not talking to a discouraged people this morning. And today, I want encourage you. Today I want for God’s spirit to get in you and for you to get some FAITH from God.

I need the faith to see it through. You need the faith to see it through. What is it? It is whatever God has called you to. It is living out your salvation and the promises of God.

For Joshua, son of Nun, “it” was entering and possessing the Promised Land.

Joshua was born as a slave in the land of Egypt and was just a young man when God sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of that land of slavery and into the Promised Land.

The Bible doesn’t say when it happened, but it does say that Joshua was the personal assistant to Moses from the time that he was a young man. Joshua was there when the 10 plagues went throughout Egypt. He was there when God opened up the Red Sea for the Israelites to walk through and he was there when that same sea closed back up on the Egyptian army.

Then comes the battle with the Amalekites. God told Moses the plan and in turn Moses told the Israelites the plan. Moses would stand at the top of a nearby hill with the staff in his hand. As long as Moses held the staff up the Israelites would win, and Joshua would be the man who would lead the Israelite army.

Moses held up the staff and Joshua and the Israelites CRUSHED the Amalekites.

Joshua was there when God met the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai. He was there when the mountain was smoking, and the trumpets of God were blaring and all the people watched as Moses called out to God and God answered back in the thunder.

Joshua was there when God called Moses up the mountain, because Joshua went with Moses up that mountain into the very presence of God. And God gave to Moses the plans for the ark of the covenant, and he planned out how the people could worship him. God wrote the 10 commandments on 2 tablets of stone for Moses to take back to the people.
When Moses and Joshua were going back down the mountain they heard a lot of noise coming from the camp of the Israelites.

Joshua said to Moses, “It sounds as if there is a war in the camp.” And Moses said, “That’s not the sound of victory or defeat, it is the sound of celebration.”

And as the two of them made there way down the mountain they began to see what the celebration was all about. The people had brought their silver and gold to Aaron, Moses’ brother, and he had made them a golden calf to worship in the place of God.

And Joshua was there as Moses broke the very tablets that God had written the 10 commandments on.

Moses was clearly God’s leader for the nation of Israel, and as his personal assistant, Joshua had some pretty sweet benefits.

When God wanted to talk to Moses His glory would descend upon the tabernacle in front of all the people and Moses and Joshua would go in and God would speak to Moses.

Some of you might be saying, “I know that God spoke to Moses in that tent, but how can you say that Joshua was in there too?”

11 Inside the Tent of Meeting, the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. Afterward Moses would return to the camp, but the young man who assisted him, Joshua son of Nun, stayed behind in the Tent of Meeting.
Ex 33:11 (NLT)

If Joshua could stay behind it has to mean that he was there in the first place. What an awesome thing to be able to go into that tabernacle or that church and watch as God spoke to Moses face to face. It was so good that Joshua didn’t want to leave when it was done. He wanted to hang around for a little while longer.

When the Israelites came to the wilderness of Paran, which is located in the North East corner of the Sinai Peninsula and just South of the Promised Land, God told Moses to send 12 spies into the land. Moses did as God commanded and picked one representative from each of the 12 tribes to go.

Joshua represented the tribe of Ephraim and he took his place amongst the others in what would be one of the biggest tests of his life. Though at the beginning of the journey, I’m sure that it felt more like an opportunity and an adventure than a test.

These 12 spies would be the first to see the Promised Land, they would be Israelites eyes, was this truly a land flowing with Milk and Honey?

The spies went up into the land on a 40 day journey and they found a land that had crops bigger than they had ever seen in Egypt. They went just as the first harvest of grapes were ready and they cut down a cluster that was so large that they had to hold it on a pole between two men. THAT’S A BIG CLUSTER!

The grapes weren’t the only big thing that the spies saw though, the land was also filled with giants, and a people who were powerful in cities that were large and well fortified.

Now this journey had transition from an exciting first look to a defining moment in Joshua’s life. Those spies were the eyes of the people of Israel. Their words would either give life, or give death.

I wonder how the conversations would have sounded on the way back to camp. I wonder if they practiced their words on their way back. There must have been some discussion among the men about what report to give.

I suppose that it came down to a matter of votes, because the men did not come to a unified decision. 10 of them wanted to report that although the land was awesome, that the people were so well fortified that the Israelites should hold off. 2 of the men wanted to say that the land was just as good as God had said and if God promised it to us, then it is ours.

The spies returned and gave 2 reports. The first report was from the 10 who were afraid. 10 men who believed that they could not have what God had promised to them. 10 men who believed that the giants were stronger and more powerful than God. These 10 men gave a report that convinced a nation to lose there faith in God.

The second report was from Caleb, who I believe was the spokesman for him and Joshua. “Let’s Go, God will surely give us this land.” Don’t look at the Giant, look at God.

But the people of Israel chose to believe the negative, doubt filled, fear mangled report instead. Joshua and Caleb tore their clothes in disbelief and the people of God decided that they would choose a new leader to take them back to Egypt.

Those spies played a vital role in the direction that the Israelites would go. We can see from how they made their decisions and from the 2 different reports that were given that 12 men were looking out of 2 different kinds of eyes.

The first were relying on human eyes.
It would be really easy for you and I to rely on our eyes as well.

Human Eyes:
• Are the most complex organs you possess except for your brain.
• Are composed of more than two million working parts.
• Can process 36,000 bits of information every hour.
• Under the right conditions, can discern the light of a candle at a distance of 22.5 km (14 miles)
• Contribute towards 85% of your total knowledge.
• Utilize 65% of all the pathways to the brain.
• Can instantaneously set in motion hundreds of muscles and organs in your body.
• In a normal life-span, will bring you almost 24 million images of the world around you.
• The eye is the only part of the human body that can function at 100% ability at any moment, day or night, without rest. Your eyelids need rest, the external muscles of your eyes need rest, the lubrication of your eyes requires replenishment, but your eyes themselves "never" need rest.

God did such an amazing job at creating our eyes, but he never intended that we would trust our eyes more than we would trust our God.

Proverbs 21:2 (NLT)
2 People may be right in their own eyes, but the Lord examines their heart.

Psalm 119:18 (NRSV)
18 Open my eyes, so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

Our eyes are such a powerful gift from God. They convince us of truths. When we gain some new information or get a new insight, we say “My eyes were opened to that.”

When we lose our sight in the dark we say “I’m blind, I can’t see” and we feel helpless and lost.

The Israelites always fell into sin when they did what was right in their own eyes.

Thomas, the disciple of Jesus needed to see the proof before he would believe the truth. Now we call people who rely on their eyes “Doubting Thomases”

Our eyes can serve as our rational and our reasoning in life. We believe what we see. Some people say, “I have to see it to believe it.”

And God says, If I have promised it, then it is even better than if you had scene it with your own eyes. Because your eyes might deceive you, but I never will.

Your eyes are connected to your brain, God’s words and promises are connected to God himself. Joshua and Caleb believed the word of God, they believed that when God promised them a piece of land that it was theirs.

When we have the faith to see it through, we rely on the supernatural instead of the natural. We rely on Faith on not on sight.

Not only did Joshua have to rely on Faith to be his eyes, he also had to rely on Faith to respond to the pressure of the people around him.

Maybe you have never thought about the kind of pressure that was on Joshua and Caleb that day. It would have been a really intense situation.

It was 2 men trying to convince a million that they should rely on God. And the people were so upset that they wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb. They were so frustrated that they wanted to kill these 2. That’s pressure. But even the possibility of death was not enough to shake their faith.

It takes faith to make it through pressure in life. There will always be voices telling you that you are on the wrong track.
• There will always be voices trying to convince you to let go and give up.
• There will be voices telling you that it is OK to compromise in one are or another.
• There will always be a voice telling you that the giant is to big, and you should just go back to where you came.

One of the areas in my life where I had to stand up against compromise and stand up for God, had to do with my work as a young man.

The Bible says
Exodus 20:8-11 (NRSV)
8 Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.
9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

Hebrews 10:25 (NCV)
25 You should not stay away from the church meetings, as some are doing, but you should meet together and encourage each other. Do this even more as you see the day coming.

When I was growing up and becoming old enough to get a job my Mom made it quite clear that no one in our family would ever work on Sunday. In fact she even put that principle into my life at a young age. When I played sports I was never allowed to play on Sunday because that would mean that I was forcing a Referee to work on Sunday and we wouldn’t go out to eat on Sunday because that would force a Restaurant staff to feed us.

We wouldn’t have the paper delivered to our house on a Sunday, because that forced a delivery person into work.

And so I knew that I would never work on a Sunday, it was God’s day.

My first job I worked at a Kiosk in Market Mall called Sheepskin Specialties. Our featured line was sheepskin lined slippers, and I have to tell you that my sister Erin paved the way for me to take a stand at that Job.

She worked at the partner store in the mall and one time they basically forced her to work on Sunday. She did it but she would not accept money for it and ever since that day they never asked her to work on a Sunday again. They didn’t ask me either, they just knew that my family didn’t work on Sunday.

My next job was for minimum wage at Safeway. When they hired me I gave them my demands. I would be one of the best bag boys they ever had, but I would never work on Sunday.

My peers did not understand my stand. What I was doing went against the culture. They said, “It’s not fair that you get Sunday off and we have to work every week.” I said “I made that condition when they hired me.” And the truth of the matter is this, If our society was obedient to God then no one would be asked to directly disobey God’s command by working on Sunday.
My peers were in a situation where they were set up to fail.

A new boss took over who didn’t know about my stand. She scheduled me to work on every Sunday from then on. I walked into her office and said that I would never work on Sunday. She said I didn’t have a choice and she left my name on that schedule.

While Sunday morning came and I didn’t go to work, and they phoned me. “Why aren’t you here”?
“I’m not at work because it’s Sunday and I don’t work on Sunday.”
“Did you find someone to replace you?”
“I tried to, but really it’s not my responsibility. It’s your responsibility to not schedule me to work on a day when I am unavailable.”

And that boss didn’t really appreciate my stand. She didn’t fire me either, because it is illegal to fire someone over religious beliefs in our country. But there was a little bit of tension.

Here is the thing though, God didn’t say that we should only obey him when the people around us understand. My obedience is not conditional on the people around me, My obedience is conditional on the word of God, and the word of God will never fail and it will never change.

I have to give credit to my parents for that stand that I took in my life. Because the honest truth is that I probably would have preferred to work some of those weeks. I didn’t have much money and I could have used a few extra bucks. But I knew that I couldn’t disobey my parents, I couldn’t leave at peace with them in their home while disobeying them, and so I took the stand.

That stand set me up in life to put God first, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to my parents for basically forcing me to do that. At the time I might have resented them a little, but it set me up for success in life and they taught me that obedience to God is a priority in life.

Here is the truth of the situation. God’s voice has to be the loudest, it has to have the most influence, and it has to carry the most weight. His word cannot be compromised; his laws and his commands cannot be ignored. When it is your turn to take a stand, how will you respond?

Joshua and Caleb responded to the voices of the people around them tactfully and in full submission and obedience to God.

Numbers 14:7-9 (NLT)
They said to the community of Israel, "The land we explored is a wonderful land! 8 And if the LORD is pleased with us, he will bring us safely into that land and give it to us. It is a rich land flowing with milk and honey, and he will give it to us! 9 Do not rebel against the LORD, and don’t be afraid of the people of the land. They are only helpless prey to us! They have no protection, but the LORD is with us! Don’t be afraid of them!"

Because Joshua and Caleb took that stand God spared them from the punishment that the rest of their generation went through. God commanded that all of the people in that Generation would die in the desert while there children would enter the promised Land.

This was the result of disobedient parents. They relied on their eyes instead of on God. Parents, your faith greatly impacts the lives of your children.

The Israelites who died in the desert put their children through an extra 40 years of waiting and wandering. They wasted the best years of there children’s life because they didn’t have the faith to take the promise that God put before them.

While 40 years passes and Joshua and Caleb are the only people of that generation still alive and so now God will allow the next generation to go into the Promised Land.

They get to the Jordan River and at this point the Promise is not yet in their hands, they can’t taste it, they can’t touch it. At this point they are just believing God. It was the harvest season and the Jordan river was overflowing its banks.

And God says, “Joshua, I am going to establish you as leader today. Command the Priests who carry the ark of the covenant to step into the river. Once they step in I will cut off the flow of water and the people will walk across on dry ground.”

This action that the priest were to do defines faith. They walked into the water while it was still overflowing the banks, they stepped into it before God had done anything, believing that He would do everything he said.

And they stepped into the water and God performed the miracle of the crossing of the Jordan River.

Then God gave another command of Faith to the Israelite army. Walk around Jericho once a day for 6 days and then 7 times on the seventh day. Walk in silence but after you have marched around the city 7 times on the 7th day the priests will sound the rams horn and your will shout with everything that you have got and God will give you the victory.

How many of you know that there was a week a marching in silence before they saw God do anything?

How many of you know that it takes faith to put one foot in front of the other when you have yet to see the Promise.

How many of you know that your families and the generations to come after you are greatly affected by what you have faith for today.

How many of you know that we cannot rely on our own eyes to tell us if the promises of God are true. As wonderful as your eyes are, they just aren’t as good as the word of God.

Faith before sight. Faith before understanding. Let faith be the filter for your life, everything that you say and think gets filtered through the word of God and your faith.

When a situation arises you put it through the filter of faith. When the people all around you point at the Giants you point to God. When the voices that come at you shout compromise you listen to the still small voice of God that is more powerful than anything you have ever experienced.

When you have a defining moment in your life, do you look at the Giant or do you go forward in faith. You need Faith to see it through.

Hebrews 3:14 (NLT)
14 For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ.

So be encouraged in the Promises of God. Be encouraged in his goodness and his grace. Be encouraged that you are a undeserving recipient of the great gift of salvation offered freely.

When his eyes saw the giants his Faith saw the promise. Joshua’s a hero, because he had the faith to see the Promises of God through.