Sermon Tone Analysis

Stewardship | Pledges | Opportunities

Often the best way to find success is to admit our failures, because without admitting failure, we could never learn from our past mistakes.

The Bible is full of examples of people’s failures and mistakes.

These examples show us many things.

They show us God’s unending forgiveness and grace.

They show us the deepest extent of God’s restoration in a broken, lost, and sinful world.

But they also show us an example of something that—all too often—we see in ourselves.

And that’s what I want to focus on over the next few weeks.

If you are a part of this church, then hopefully you are aware that this is pledge time.

The council is prayerfully considering how to best use the resources God has entrusted to us to do the work of the mission of his church.

Part of that process is asking all of our members to prayerfully consider what God is calling each one of us to share in tithing to the church.

To help us in that, the messages over the next few weeks are going to focus on the Biblical topic of stewardship.

But in particular, I am going to pull out a few examples in the Bible of people who failed to live according to the kind of stewardship for which God is calling.

The idea here is not that we hope to promote bad stewardship.

Rather, we hope to point out some of our own common mistakes and flaws, so that we can learn from our own failures, and become better followers of Jesus in the way we use and share our blessings.

Today let’s talk about opportunities.

Here is a story from the Bible in which the entire nation of Israel is given the opportunity of coming out from wandering in the dessert after 400 years of slavery.

Proceed to the Route

GPS | Israel as the promised land

I’ve become a little too dependent on the GPS in my phone.

When I lived in Grand Rapids 20 years ago there were no smart phones.

Cars did not come with GPS screens built in.

To get around Grand Rapids 20 years ago, I either needed to know exactly where I was going, or I needed to know how to look it up on a map—like an actual paper map that unfolded to the size of a dining room table and was impossible to ever fold back up again.

But not anymore.

Now just about everybody has a phone that will look up addresses and give turn-by-turn directions on the screen to guide us to our destinations.

It is a remarkable change in the 20 years that I have been away from Grand Rapids.

GPS as we know it may be a newer technology of this recent generation.

But turn-by-turn navigation is nothing new.

In fact, this early form of GPS is exactly how God guided the people of Israel through the wilderness and right up to the boarders of the promised land of Canaan.

God charted the route for them.

All they had to do was take hold of the opportunity to follow.

So, what went wrong here?

Why did the people not continue on into Canaan as God had commanded and Moses instructed?

Why did they pass up this opportunity?

Why did they not proceed on the route God had given them?

It’s not like people of Israel didn’t have a plan.

It’s not like they didn’t know the vision for what God wanted them to become.

It’s not like they all sat by the boarder of Canaan and asked themselves what should happen next.

The previous months in the wilderness and at Mount Sinai should have made those things perfectly clear.

Over and over God reminded them through Moses that the promise made to Abraham and his descendants was being kept.

Over and over God reminded Israel of his vision for how they should live once they receive the land that God was about to give to them—that he promised to give to them.

Opportunities that slip away – squandered | perfect day, job, college

So, what happened?

They certainly did not miss the opportunity to enter the promised land because they were ignorant or unaware.

They could walk away from Canaan and say, “oh, we didn’t know that was even an option for us to go that way.”

Nope.

The people failed to proceed on the route, not because they missed the opportunity, but because they squandered the opportunity.

They had it—and they knew they had it—and they let it slip away.

Do you know what that is like?

To clearly see an opportunity right in front of you with all the resources and potential to take advantage of it, but then let it slip right on past.

A squandered opportunity.

Maybe these opportunities came up in all sorts of little ways.

A perfect sunny warm day with some free time on my hands—a perfect day for the beach or a hike.

And I choose to sit and binge watch Netflix instead.

An opportunity squandered.

Maybe it’s something huge.

A job offer or a college acceptance letter to something that looks awesome, but for whatever reason, you pass it up.

Here’s the thing.

There are opportunities placed in front of us all the time—every single day.

Sometimes we take hold of those opportunities.

Sometimes we take a pass.

Sometimes opportunities are provided by God as a in order to use his blessings in the way he intends for us.

Sometimes opportunities are squandered by distractions that keep us from using his blessings the way that he wants.

So, how are we supposed to know?

How are we supposed to be the good stewards God wants us to be and use the resources he has given to us with the opportunities he places in front of us.

It’s easy for us to sit here and read the story of Israel from the Bible and make judgements, because we have the benefit of knowing how the story ends.

But it’s not quite so easy when we face all these choices every day in our own lives and wonder how we can best follow God through the use of what he has given to us.

How do you know?

Make a U-Turn

Maybe it would be helpful here to take a closer look at how Israel failed to proceed on the route of God’s opportunity.

Maybe noticing a few details of that story will give us some insight to see how it is we sometimes squander opportunity in our own lives.

Israel gets right to the edge of God’s promised land, and they make a U-turn.

They are following the GPS route God has for them right up to this moment, and then they stop and turn around.

Take a closer look at that.

Israel’s U-turn moment | scouts’ report

The instructions from Moses for the scouts exploring the land were pretty clear.

We didn’t read that part.

It comes at the beginning of Numbers 13.

And the report comes back that way.

They report about the land, the cities, the people, and the agriculture.

They confirm everything is true about God’s promise of a land flowing with milk and honey—a colloquial term that means it is a land that is very fertile and good for producing crops and other resources.

But then something happens in this passage.

The scouts go beyond their mandate.

They were only supposed to give a report on the land.

They were never asked to give an opinion or an interpretation of God’s command whether or not to go into the land.

As far as they were concerned, that was supposed to be a given.

Of course, we’re going into the land…why wouldn’t we go into the land?

Then comes the U-turn.

As the scouts are giving their report on the cities and the people of Canaan, apparently the news was stirring a bit of a commotion.

It is enough of a commotion that Caleb—one of the scouts—has to quiet down the whole crowd and get back to reminding everyone of their route.

But ten of the other scouts think otherwise; they do not want to go into the promised land.

And so, these ten scouts sabotage the journey for the entire nation of Israel by making up stories, by exaggerating the details and lying in order to intentionally incite fear in the people.

Nephilim exaggeration

Instead of telling the truth about Canaan as a land flowing with milk and honey, they instead say it is a land that devours the people who live there.

And they also report that the people there are not only strong, they are giants.

The Nephilim were supposed to be mythical heroes of ages ago.

This comes from Genesis six, right before Noah and the flood.

No one knows for sure who the Nephilim were.

Genesis vaguely describes them by saying some of the sons of God (speculated to perhaps be among the angels) came to earth and had offspring with the daughters of men.

These demigod-like offspring were known as the Nephilim.