Trust Given, Trust Broken
In the Wilderness • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
The Lord said to Moses,
“Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites; from each of their ancestral tribes you shall send a man, every one a leader among them.”
So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran, according to the command of the Lord, all of them leading men among the Israelites.
If you’ve been here the past couple of weeks then you already know that this is probably not going to go well. But in case you are just tuning in, let me fill you in for a moment. We are in the middle of a sermon series called “in the wilderness.” We are moving our way through the book of Numbers in order to see how, in the face of human betrayal, God’s faithfulness helps us to find healing.
So far we’ve looked at how Moses’s closest relatives, his siblings, betrayed him. Immediately after that situation is resolved, a new situation is about to arise. This time, the primary actors are going to be the next closest group of people to Moses — leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel.
But before we get into the weeds, lets do a little bit of catch up.
Long before this moment in history, God called a man named Abraham from his hometown somewhere to the east, likely in the land of Babylon. He promised Abraham that he would have numerous descendants and that they would become a nation that occupied a place called “the promised land.” That land was the land of Canaan.
Abraham’s grandson Jacob carried this promise, and he had 12 sons. Those sons became the heads of the tribes of Israel. That family moved down into Egypt to survive a massive famine, but over time they became enslaved by the Egyptians. But God rescued them through Moses. Moses led them out of Egypt and into the wilderness on a quest to move into the promised land — the land of Canaan.
And so it seems that Moses and the Israelites have gotten pretty close to Canaan, close enough to send spies in to see what they are going to be dealing with when they get there.
You see, although God promised this land to Israel — it’s already occupied by a bunch of other nations and people groups. So God tells Moses, “send in some spies to get a better understanding of what you’re dealing with.”
Moses appoints 12 leaders to go into the land, and this is what he tells them:
Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, “Go up there into the Negeb, and go up into the hill country,
and see what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many,
and whether the land they live in is good or bad, and whether the towns that they live in are unwalled or fortified,
and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be bold, and bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now it was the season of the first ripe grapes.
Basically he says go find out if we can beat the people living there in battle, see if they pose a threat to us. And also find out if this land is all that it’s cracked up to be. Find out if it truly still “flows with milk and honey” like God told us.
So the spies go and do as they are told, and this is what happens:
At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land.
And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land.
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.
Ok, so things are looking good. The spies were gone for 40 days — which is a time of testing in terms of biblical themes — and they’ve come back with a seemingly positive result. The land is good. Really good actually. It’s what God has said it is. All good right? Almost. Here’s the next lines:
Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.
It’s a great place… but. That’s their report. It’s a great place, but we can’t afford to go there. It’s like how I feel about certain department stores and car dealerships. Beautiful stuff, but out of my price range.
They say the people who live there are militarized. They’ve got defenses — the cities are walled. We aren’t just walking in there. AND — in case you aren’t convinced — the descendants of Anak are there.
The descendants of Anak — or Anakim — were very large people, actually they were considered giants. Some people believe they were just folks that were naturally genetically taller than you average Israelite, which is definitely a viable opinion as Israelites were known to be small.
But others believe that they were super naturally large. Like they were a hybrid creation from the unholy union between humans and spiritual beings.
Regardless of what they actually were — Israelites definitely held the latter view. To them the Anakim, who descended from beings called Nephilim, were supernaturally evil and strong. These were not beings to be messed with.
So that’s the report coming back. Like bad news bears here Moses. We can’t go into the promised land. God lied to us.
This is not a good scene for Moses. His authority, his vision, his direction for the people is being directly challenged — all in front of the people. He is being betrayed, publicly by the people that he trusted. They haven’t gone all the way just yet, there is still some hope. They’ve simply voiced their opinion. Maybe there’s still some hope:
But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”
Ah there it is. Caleb, brings the minority report. We can do this, Moses and friends. After all… God did promise this land to us and also God promised to bless us and bring us peace. Certainly all of the quarreling in the wilderness isn’t the peace we’ve been promised. Let’s see how this plays out:
Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.”
So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size.
There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
So this is where we leave off for the day. There’s not a really good resolution. The spies don’t relent. They start to rile up the people, stretching the story even further. They engage in a campaign of disinformation to unsettle the people and derail Moses’s plan to enter the promised land. They are actively working against God’s promises — against God’s promise that Israel will inhabit the land of Canaan and against God’s promise to bring Shalom and peace to the people.
This scene has got its modern day application right? Just on a societal level this is what we deal with. I honestly don’t know who or what to trust when it comes to getting information about “what’s really going on.” There’s very few sources of information that aren’t trying to pull or even deceive us into a particular way of thinking about what’s happening in the world.
But besides that, what we are seeing here is something that we will often face in life at one point or another. We develop a circle of trust in our personal lives, our professional lives, even our philanthropic lives. And sometimes the people that we trust — whether they intend to do so or not — stab us in the back and derail our plans, our vision, or our hopes for the future.
Sometimes its just that those people that we called friends are poisoning our name and reputation behind our backs. It’s happened to us all I’m sure. We’ve all been through middle school. And some people never graduate from that middle school mentality. Gossip and rumors run our world at times, and it’s only intensified as the world has moved towards the social media domination.
So what Moses is dealing with here… well it’s not unique right? It’s something that we all understand and deal with. Heck, even Jesus dealt with this. Look at this from Matthew’s Gospel:
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Peter is trying to push against God’s divine plane for human redemption… and he doesn’t even realize it.
So what is the answer? How do we deal with and heal from the wounds caused by the trust we give being broken?
I think Moses’s story gives us some insight. It’s easy to focus on the report of the majority of the spies. 10 of them were actively working against Moses. But 2 of them — Caleb and Joshua — remembered the promises of God and their loyalty to Moses and his charge.
We’ve got to focus on those who still stand with us. It’s easy to focus on the mess caused by those who have hurt us in the past or are currently causing us pain. But the truth of the matter is that we can’t focus on that, as hard as it is for us to try to shift our attention. Focusing on the trust that was broken stops us from being able to give our attention and trust to those who deserve it. Our Calebs and our Joshuas. The people who stand by us when it seems everyone else has seen fit to leave us behind and tarnish our names on the way out.
When we focus on the ones who have caused us harm, we continue their cycle of harm. When we hold onto the pain, we simply drink poison hoping that the person who hurt us dies.
We need to focus on those who are still in our corner. Those who still believe in our vision. Who still believe in God’s vision for our lives. People who still see us the way that God sees us.
When we place our focus on that, on the people who remind us that not everyone has betrayed us, then we can begin to heal. We can begin to see ourselves in the right frame of reality. We can begin to trust again. It may come slowly, and it may be a tough process. But we can do it, because that is what God has promised us. God has promised us peace, shalom, the reconciliation of our own hearts to the world around us.
When Jesus rebuked Peter for opposing his journey to the cross, he told him to focus on divine things. And what is more divine than the promises of God’s peace in our lives? What is more divine than holding fast to the promises of God? What is more divine than the people who hold on to you when it seems like everyone else is walking away?
So let us focus on the divine things together. Let’s put all the past and maybe even current hurts aside and just lean into the people who still stand by our sides. Let’s make it a point to tell them how much we appreciate them this week. Let’s make it a point to thank God and be grateful for those who are loyal to us, even if they are in the minority. God has proven that the minority can be just enough to change the world, so lets let it be enough change our hearts and our minds.