Numbers
It’s officially summer time
now (as of last Friday)
and many of us will enjoy vacations, some of us to the
great outdoors.
My own family and I will be
going on a vacation later in the summer,
camping at
Dave & I have always enjoyed the outdoors.
But we are not hard-core
about our outdoor adventures.
We like the great
outdoors. On the other hand, our sons
like wilderness
They like the isolation, the
challenge, the tests that a real wilderness experience offers. This past week, my middle son Andrew,
who is working at
I didn’t know what that was
till this week,
when I found out
He climbed it in 22
hours. 22 days wouldn’t have been enough
for me.
He likes wilderness and all
its challenges.
Wilderness with all its
challenges and tests
is the setting for the story we heard in today’s
scripture reading.
Caleb, who is a fairly minor
character in the Bible compared to some,
plays an important role in this story. He appears in several books in the OT --
Deuteronomy, Joshua, 1 Chronicles, as well as Numbers, which we heard from
today. Numbers is the fourth book of the
Bible,
and its name has to do with the census taking that is
part of the book.
But there is another name for
the book;
its Hebrew name is “In the Wilderness” and it comes from
the first verse of the book.
The wilderness setting in the Bible is always a
metaphor for being tested.
Sometimes it’s a time of wandering where clear answers
are hard to find.
It’s almost always a time of challenge where God’s
people learn valuable lessons.
But the wandering, the testing, the challenge, is
always part of the journey.
This particular story of
Caleb and the Israelite people
takes place over two chapters in Numbers 13 and 14.
We didn’t read the whole
story here, but even if you haven’t heard it before,
it’s a familiar story because it is a recurring
story.
We know this story because
it’s been going on ever since the Israelites left
First complaining and
blaming. Then there is usually big
drama.
They argue among
themselves. They threaten their
leaders.
And the things they say: Better to have died in
Why has the Lord done this to
us? Let’s go back to what we know.
This has happened over and
over as the Israelites left
and began the journey to the promised land.
We stopped our reading in
today’s lesson as
Caleb urges the people to
trust in God’s promises.
But in the very next verse,
the people are threatening to stone him.
Anybody would lose patience
with it all. Even God.
If you read on in chapter 14
it’s as if the Lord finally throws up his hands and says,
“I’ve had it! You’ve tested me over and over. And still you refuse to believe in me!” And then in a story which demonstrates God
changing his mind, Moses goes before God, defending this sorry bunch that he’s
leading, and urging God to have mercy.
And God does. God’s love always remains steadfast.
If you have not already, you
really must go home and read these two chapters (13 & 14)
Time after time, it’s the
same old story for the Israelites. God
knows them well.
As soon as they hit a
challenge, they start complaining and blaming.
But this time there is
someone in the story whom God says has a different spirit.
Someone who
is following the Lord with his whole heart.
Someone
with a spirit of faithfulness and trust in God.
Caleb doesn’t put his faith
in the outcomes he can see,
but in the promises he knows God has made.
Because of this, he doesn’t
want to settle for going back to what they know.
He can see God’s promises and
wants to go after them.
As the people are all riled
up and fearful of their future,
Caleb speaks up, calms them
down and says “We can do this!”
But there are always a lot of
nay-sayers --
Leaders even, and people who
feed their fears and tell them things that just aren’t true:
“We can’t - there are giants
in this land. We can’t.”
But then Caleb, speaks up
again, this time with Joshua, and says
“The Lord is with us, do not
fear.”
What happens next may not be
the way we would have written the story.
The Israelites end up
wandering in the wilderness for 40 years,
under the leadership of Joshua and Caleb.
But it’s not just pointless wandering.
It’s during these wilderness times that they learn to
trust God.
“Do not fear, the Lord is with us,”
Caleb tells them, and over 40 years they learn that
lesson.
This lesson of “God with us” is critical for us to
learn too.
It is the overarching theme
of the Bible.
The entire story of the Bible
is the story of “God with us.”
First in creation, then in a
dramatic rescue from slavery in
through wandering in the wilderness where it was always back
and forth faithfulness -
yes God, no God, yes God, no God.
Then the promised
land, and the people of God trying to live faithfully,
succeeding sometimes, failing often.
But still God is with us, not giving up on us.
God with us in the person of
Jesus - in fact the word Immanuel means God with us.
God with us
in suffering and death.
God with us
in spirit and in truth.
God with
us, forming us into the body of Christ, the church.
God with us
into eternity.
Our Christian story is the story of God with us.
The difference between Caleb
and the rest of the Israelite leaders
who incited all that fear and panic among the Israelites
is that Caleb had
a different spirit - a spirit of trust in “God with us” -even in the wilderness.
The Israelites aren’t the
only ones who need help
learning this lesson of trusting God even in the
wilderness. We all do.
Every week I talk to or meet
someone who is going through a wilderness time.
You probably do too.
The wilderness time might be a
troubled marriage.
Problems
with a child. Fears about job security. Struggles with health.
Addiction
and recovery issues. Depression.
More often than not, it is a
time of loneliness. A
time of testing. A time of challenges.
We’ve all been there. We might be there right now.
Too often, though we are
wandering in the wilderness
and we think we are alone in our wanderings.
Sometimes we even hear that
message in the church.
We’ve been talking about
God-sightings, places where we see God,
times when we encounter Christ, in the past couple of
weeks.
We have shared some stories
together, some testimony.
But I also know that for some
of you,
you’re just not seeing God right now,
and hearing these can make you feel even more alone.
We can feel alone in the
wilderness
when we’re suffering from the loss of someone we
love.
When we are
struggling with an addiction.
When we are
torn between two difficult choices.
Many of us come to church
keeping all this to ourselves,
not knowing or trusting for sure that God is with us in community too, this
community.
A challenge for the church must be to learn how to
recognize
when people are in these wilderness places -
these difficult places -
and to offer a helping hand to get
through.
As difficult and painful as
these times are,
the church can help us experience God-with-us in the
midst of that wilderness.
When we are in the
wilderness, there are two ways to go.
We can go the way of the rest
of those Israelite leaders in today’s scripture
and let fear take hold of us and turn every challenge we
face into a giant.
An
insurmountable problem.
Or we can go the way of
Caleb, who has a different spirit --
a spirit of giving his whole heart to God.
A spirit of
trusting that God is with us - even in the wilderness.
With that spirit, fear
disappears.
After Moses intercedes with
God for the Israelite, God concedes.
Listen to this reading from
Numbers 14:20-24.
Being wholehearted applies
not only to our personal and family lives,
it applies to our life together as God’s people -- as
the church.
As we begin a new service
year at our church, with new and returning leadership,
what we need here as much as anything is a Caleb spirit --
a spirit of wholeheartedness.
We need that wholeheartedness
as individuals and we need it as a church.
C.S. Lewis wrote about what
it means to be a Christian with one’s whole heart.
He says it so well that I
quote from him:
“The Christian way is
different: harder, and easier.
Christ says, ‘Give me
All.
I don’t want so much of your
time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want YOU.
I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.
No half-measures are any
good.
I don’t want to cut off a
branch here and a branch there,
I want to have the whole tree
down.
Hand over the whole natural
self,
all the desires which you think innocent as well as the
ones you think wicked -
the whole outfit.
I will give you a new self instead.
In fact, I will give you Myself: my own shall become yours.’”[1]
This way of being a Christian
- with one’s whole heart -
makes all the difference in our wilderness times.
For when we yield to Christ
in this way, as individuals and as a church,
We receive the grace and
power to survive and even thrive in our own wilderness times.
May that wholeheartedness to
Christ -- and the grace and power that comes with it --
be with you and with this church in the coming
year. Amen.
[1] Norman Shawchuk, Reuben P. Job, A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God (