The Promise in the Presence of Giants
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Text: Num 13
Text: Num 13
17 When Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, he said to them, “Go up there into the Negev; then go up into the hill country.
18 “See what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many.
19 “How is the land in which they live, is it good or bad? And how are the cities in which they live, are they like open camps or with fortifications?
20 “How is the land, is it fat or lean? Are there trees in it or not? Make an effort then to get some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.
Context
Context
Start with the promise to Abraham and go through to the promise land…
Why Canaan? Why "promised land?"
God had favor on "Abram" (High Father), who had no kids, his body was "as good as dead" and his wife's womb was barren.
Sarai was one of several women in her lineage that would be barren until the Lord intervened.
God’s Promise:
1 Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
2 And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
3 And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
16 “I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered.
5 And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
Abraham means “Father of a Multitude”
Ya=YHWH, so God took a bit of His own name and put it with Abram’s name… It’s as if God is saying, “All you needed was Me in you and everything else will fall in place...”
“And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed”
This is a carryover from the promise to the woman in Gen. 3, that there would be a seed from her that would crush the head of the serpant…
All this is leading to Jesus, and the lineage of Abraham is the chosen genealogy where Jesus would come from.
So we have the promise God has made to Abraham that his seed would bless the whole earth, and his children would be like the sand of the shore and the stars in the sky, but there is another line of the promise:
7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.
14 The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward;
15 for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever.
So it was promised to Abraham… thus “promised land”
Hundreds of years later, the nation which sprung from the seed of Abraham, is named after his grandson, Israel.
Israel has been living within Egypt under the rule of Pharaoh for 400 years, before God sends a deliverer by the name of Moses. Through a series of events we call the Exodus, Israel is championed by God and delivered out of the bondage they were in, and taken toward the promised land... the Land of Canaan.
It is here, after all this time, and all the journey taken throughout the generations of Abraham that we find our text.
They've been delivered out of Egypt, taken through the wilderness for months, been fed mana from heaven, drank water out of a rock, eaten quail God blew in with a strong wind, and now they are standing at the precipice of the promise...
Have you ever been at the precipice of the promise?
Sometimes the precipice is the hardest place, because you can see where God wants to lead you, but you're unsure how you're going to get there.
Numbers tells us Israel was on the precipice, and God commands them to send spies into the land.
1 Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying,
2 “Send out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel; you shall send a man from each of their fathers’ tribes, every one a leader among them.”
3 So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel.
God is showing them the power of the miracle but they were looking for the strategy…
God, I know you can do it, but HOW are you…
27 Thus they told him, and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
28 “Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there.
29 “Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.”
30 Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.”
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.”
They are too strong… the problem is too big… the report is too bad… the result was too final…
They are too strong for US…
“God, it’s too big! I can’t do it!”
God is going, “Of course not! Why do you think I made you these promises? It’s not about your strength! It’s about MY provision”
Have you ever looked a problem right in the face and been intimidated?
32 So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.
33 “There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
Grasshoppers in our own sight…
We saw the promise… We Saw the fruit… We Saw the milk and honey… BUT WE SAW THE GIANTS…
Israel is on the precipice of the promise, but all they see are the giants…
God sends them to see the promise, but what they focus on is the obstacle standing in the way…
What they failed to realize was that obstacle wasn’t just an obstacle, it was an opportunity....
It was an opportunity for God to show up and show off…
Sometimes the biggest challenges you face are the best opportunities for God to show His superiority as God.
Story about the Warlock in Haiti
When they went in, they expected to see a land ripe for harvest and no opposition.
They thought for sure all their troubles drown in the Red Sea with Pharaoh's army.
This is the problem with the crux of the prosperity Gospel. When you tell people that they should get saved and give their all to Jesus and life beyond that will be sunshine and roses all the time, the first time life punches them in the face, they look around and go, what happened!?
This is not what I was promised! Then they get mad at God because they had their own expectations on how He would handle it, based on what they were taught by a ear-tickling motivational speaker with Christian taglines…
What we need is a real presentation of the Gospel that represents what it’s really like when you get saved!
God didn’t promise you wouldn’t have challenges, He promised to see you through them!
They were expecting a military strategy, but what they get is a promise planted in the presence of Giants.
You weren’t expecting that diagnosis, that bill to come in, that family member to walk away, and now you’re staring at the promise, but it’s surrounded by giants…
You were expecting to see the promise, but not like this…
How often do we want God to show up, but when He does, it’s not like we expect…
What we find out later:
10 “Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build,
11 and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied,
12 then watch yourself, that you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
God had a plan all along!
The giants didn’t surprise Him!
He brought you out of Egypt, drowned Pharoah’s armies in the Red Sea, provided mana from heaven, quail from the wind, didn’t need any help then, and doesn’t need it now…
If God said the land is yours, TAKE IT!
He will stand beside you as a Dread warrior…
All the armies of the earth couldn’t stand before Him in battle…
He’s a strong tower for those who rest in Him…
He’s a shield and a buckler…
David stood before a giant, but God stood with David…
God told Job, I enclosed the sea with doors and placed it’s boundaries. I commanded it saying you shall come this far and no further…
God commands the sun to rise and the dawn to know it’s place…
God said, I’ve stored up storehouses of snow and hail for My day of war and battle… I send flashes of lightning to their place and bring the clouds together in a storm…
Tighten up your belt and see if you can judge me… Do you have an arm like God and can you thunder with a voice like His?
It was at His word that all of creation was formed and it will be at his command when it melts away…
Now let me ask you… What do your giants look like next to this God?
And yet, they saw themselves as grasshoppers and the inhabitants of this land as Giants…
They saw the cities as fortresses and their armies as un-defeatable.
They were on the precipice of the promise, but their perception resulted in fear rather than faith…
Don’t get to the edge of your destiny and allow fear to overtake you!
What they saw as giants and fortified cities, God had set up for the fulfillment of promise!
27 “I will send My terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.
28 “I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you.
29 “I will not drive them out before you in a single year, that the land may not become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.
30 “I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land.
If God has to send angels or hornets, confusion or terror, fire or rain, His promise will stand!
God had a plan all along!
Had he delivered the land straightaway in one year, He says the beasts of the field would've overtaken Israel...
So He allowed the enemy to take care of the land while Israel prepared!
You may not be ready for the whole promise, but don't let the Giants stop you! They are caretakers of your promise!
God allowed the giants to be there to cultivate what Israel would reap!
If He promised it to you, it's yours!
They are planting the crops you'll eat, building the houses you'll live in, organizing the cities you'll profit from, cultivating the ground you’ll harvest...
Don't let the giants deter you! The promise will prevail!
What we read later is Israel finally enters the promised land after wandering 40 years in the wilderness and some time after they are in the land God reminds them:
12 ‘Then I sent the hornet before you and it drove out the two kings of the Amorites from before you, but not by your sword or your bow.
13 ‘I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you have lived in them; you are eating of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.’
And it all started at the edge… on the brim.. on the precipice of the promise when they were looking in and refused to trust God.
Can you see your promise in the midst of the giants?
Israel should’ve inherited their promise 40 years earlier, but they refused to trust God.
Hebrews tells us that they were unable to enter because of their unbelief… Not their lack of skill or experience or education…
Their unbelief gave way to fear and it cost them 40 years…
Imagine This:
Israel is taken into a place built by giants, formed to support cities larger than their own, communities with more than themselves…
In other words, they ended up living in houses built bigger than they would have made themselves…
Reaped harvests from fields that were plowed with tools bigger than they could handle.
They took meat from herds big enough that if God had not restrained them, the animals alone would have overtaken the nation..
The Promise God has given you is bigger than you thought, larger than you could sustain, and beyond your abilities to attain on your own…
Don’t let the giants hold you back! It takes something bigger than yourself to hold the promise God has for you!
God already has a plan worked out!
The challenges didn’t surprise Him!
Paul said it this way, to live is Christ and to die is gain… WE WIN!
Altar Call:
I wonder is there anyone in this room that has been asking God, why does it look like this?
All I see is the opposition and resistance, but I need the promise!
The giants look big, and the challenge looks too great…