Sermon Tone Analysis

A Land of Their Own

It had been along journey for Mt.

Horeb.

They have come to a place called Kadesh Barnea, an oasis not far from the promised land.

They had had many trials along the way with many reminders of how God was leading them.

They had had heard God and and were given His instructions for their lives in the form of 2 tablets of stone written on by His own hand.

Moses had lead them with God’s guidance in the form of the Cloud always in their presence.

They had experienced all these things.

The Israelites knew they would be soon crossing over into the land that was promised to them.

An idea was purposed to Moses and he took it to the Lord.

Moses gave them a process for them to follow.

This is probably the route they followed.

They were instructed to go all the way to Hamath and back, about 150 miles one way.

The Bible says that it took them 40 days to make that trek.

The people had been promised by God that the land would be rich and fertile: a land “flowing with milk and honey”.

I can surmise that people waiting in the camp were pondering, would the report bear this out.

Everybody waited and wondered.

Reporting Back

If I had been in the camp and saw the men carrying that in, I would have had to tie my mouth shut to keep my lower jaw from hitting the ground.

Have have you ever imagined even grapes such as those.

How about trying to eat one? 2 men had to carry one bunch between them.

Samples of pomegranates and figs where offered for the people to see.

This was only a sampling of what the Lord had in store for His people.

For a short time they were inspired.

They were ready to go up and possess the land.

God had promised it to them, the time had come at last.

The reporters went on from this description to another.

What ever reckoning the spies had used to give this report, there was a definite “but” standing in the way.

What does that word but do to you?

Definitions for the word but from Webster: except for the fact, if not, on the contrary, on the other hand, with the exception of.

Is there any positiveness in any of those uses?

All negative aren’t they.

You’ll have experienced what happens to a positive conversation when a negative or a “but” is thrown in.

I don’t have to describe it.

Negative thoughts go along ways in squelching God’s possibilities for our lives and our church.

What did it do for Isreal?

The excited chatter and the elation died as these new descriptions made it through the crowd.

Courage was replaced with despair.

The vision and knowledge of the mighty power of God, so often given to them already, vanished and was forgotten.

The spies explained that they saw two aspects to this problem: “the people that live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large” and to top it off “We saw the descendants of Anak there” Giants rumored to descend from the the Nephilim themselves.

No one could overpower them.

A greatly anticipated day fell into pandemonium.

The Minority Report

2 out of the 12 had a different opinion.

Imagine this secene with me.

12 men all well known to the people, the Bible says each one a head of their respective tribes, giving their opinions and 10 of them came up the same answer.

Then you have Caleb, backed up by Joshua and seeing where this was going, his mind screaming noooooo.

Imagine the courage and the bravery it took to stand against that vast majority and voice his opinion.

What happens in the pit of your stomach and the palms of your hands when you know in your heart that you need to voice your opinion on a certain topic?

I know what mine does.

As Christians living in an increasingly godless and secular world with laws and opinions that undermine God’s moral law on a daily basis now, it’s tough to speak out against the prevailing opinion with all the ‘political correctness’ that everyone thinks is necessary.

I’m speaking to myself as well here.

Do we stand up and make our stand with God or do we remain silent and let evil prevail.

This world will succumb to evil.

we can’t prevent that.

The Bible tells us so.

But the individuals that we connect with each day, will we stand by and let Satan have them too?

12 men went to the same places at the same time and all saw the same situations.

How could they come to such diametrically opposed conclusions?

10 of them were walking by site alone, Caleb and Joshua were walking by faith!

What a difference eyes through faith see vs eyes motivated by self.

Instead of we saw and we can’t , the result was, Let’s go occupy and take for we will be able to overcome.

They weren’t put off by obstacles in the path.

They were looking at God, not the problems.

There boldness and confidence were based on what they believed God could do, not on what they believed the Israelites could do.

If we had been one of the 12 would our reports been like the ten or the two?

Full of fear and unbelief or full of faith and based on our belief in God no matter what we saw?

Paul exhorts us

My prayer is that God help each one of us attain this level of maturity in our walk with Him.

Negative Talk

One can only guess, but I imagine that the discussion didn’t end quickly at all.

There was plenty of blaming mostly at Aaron and Moses.

The mob responded as a mob usually dose: shouting, grumbling, fear, weeping, it was all there and then some.

The Israelite returned to a familiar theme.

The negative faithless talk had clearly infiltrated the whole camp.

There emotions and everything that goes along with that were now completely out of perspective.

They only saw one alternative: back to Egypt.

Where had their faith and trust in God gone?

So many miracles.

So many tangible evidences of God’s love, care and protection for them.

They were on the very threshold of achieving the goal God had promised them and they were letting it slip through their fingers.

Satan’s instigation of unbelief hand be able to overcome belief.

Are we immune from this problem?

It does happen to us doesn't it.

We trust God to take of the relatively small matters in our lives, but let some big event, some major problem loom up and faith goes right out the window.

Those bad things distort our perspective and we mentally seem to loose all that we have gained.

How do we keep that from happening.

Encourage one another and ourselves by remembering all the things that God has already done .

All those tangible good things that have happened in our lives and the bad things that we have gotten through and survived with the help of our Saviour.

If we build and keep building our faith with these verses and more, God will enable us to achieve that or those goals that He has laid on our hearts.

Positive Talk

At this point, Caleb and Joshua could stand it no longer.

They had been listening to all the carrying on, so in an attempt to get the people to listen to reason they tried again.

With their clothes ripped and standing in the midst of the crowd, Caleb with Joshua, probably since he seemed to be the spokesperson, brought out these very important points: the land was exceedingly good, that God would lead them into the land and give it to them - provided that they didn’t rebel against Him, that Israel should not fear the people of those lands because “we will swallow them up”.

“The Lord is with us do not fear them!”

Caleb so wanted them to get a different picture than the other 10 were trying to pass on.

But they could not or would not.

When we see things through the eyes of faith, we see them as God views them.

Unfortunately the rest of Isreal did not have the same vision that Caleb had.

They had given themselves up to despair.