1/22/12  Explore The Promised Land

Kevin Jesmer NIU UBF 1-22-12  Inspired by the message delivered by P. Abraham Kim UBF director
Numbers 13:1-14:25  Key Verse 13:2

“Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites.
From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.”

The Israelites reached the border of the land God had promised them. At the Lord’s command, Moses sent twelve spies, one from each tribe, to explore it. They discovered that the land was good, but the people were fearsome. Almost everyone was dismayed. Caleb and Joshua, however, believed that the Lord would give them the good land if they had faith that pleased the Lord. They were men of faith and obedience who followed God wholeheartedly. There is also a promised land God has given to each of us and every community in Christ. The land that needs to be conquered is the land of our inner person and the mission field we have been called to serve. It also is the Kingdom of God that Jesus has conquered for us. Through as study this passage may God fill our hearts with a spirit of conquest and a spirit of victory. May we conquer the promise lands that God has led us too, beginning with our own hearts. May we also be sources of encouragement to others, like Caleb and Joshua were. May God bless you.

Part I: God Commands Exploration Of Canaan (13:1-25)

The Book of Numbers begins with numbering the Israelites who could go to war at Mt. Sinai, a year and a month after the Exodus. During that time, the Israelites made a covenant with God and became a special people who had fellowship with God at the Tent of Meeting. In spite of their sin of idolatry, God forgave them and led them to the Desert of Paran where they could see the Promised Land. This took forty years. When they got there, God commanded through Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.” (1-2) Why did God want to send in explorers? There were several reasons. Let’s see…

First, to go and explore the land required faith. In the land were great, walled cities. The people were huge and known for their cruelty in battle. They even had iron chariots. Why not just overwhelm the enemy with vast numbers of Israelites, for they numbered two or three million? God had his reasons. They needed to trust God that God had the best strategy in mind.

Second, exploring the enemy camp is a basic step before any military operation. It is true that God wants us to do everything by faith, but he doesn’t want us to do things blindly not knowing the situation and developing a strategy. In fact, the Bible records wars in which God commanded his servants to explore the battle fields, instructed strategies and tactics, whereby they won victories….how?…by obeying God’s instructions with faith. May we find God strategy in the coming year for serving our mission field. I believe it is through 1:1 Bible study, discipleship and alliance building with local Christians and Christian ministries.

Third, God wanted to encourage and inspire his people. God repeatedly called the land of Canaan “the land I am giving to the Israelites” or “the land I promised them on oath” (13:2, 14:16, 23, 30, 15:2). God’s command to explore the land is similar to his command to Abraham when he said, “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever….Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.” (Ge 13:14-17) Just like Abraham, God wanted the explorers to encourage the Israelites by helping them to know the beauty of the land, be thankful to God, and be filled with desire to conquer and possess the land. God wants us to look at the land he gives us and explore it. He wants us to walk through the land by faith and possess it in our hearts. Maybe we should go the walk around the campus, see its beauty and pray.

Part ll: The Promised Land God Has Called Us To Conquer

The land, in every generation, in every locale, (without and within) is full of idol-worship and corrupt secular cultural forces that oppose the Gospel. God wants to bring about His kingdom through our spiritual conquest and taking possession of the land. We aren’t talking about literal war, for our battle is never against flesh and blood. (Eph 6:11-13) Spiritually, however, the world is at war and the war will continue until our Lord’s Second Coming. We are leaders and foot soldiers of the Lord’s army. There is battle to win. And so, what is the Promised Land for us to conquer? The first is conquering our own hearts with the gospel. Second is entering the kingdom of Heaven following our conquering general, Jesus Christ. This is the most important aspect. And the third is “conquering” the mission field that God has placed us into.

First, conquering ourselves…our inner hearts. This means overcoming our sinful nature and growing in spiritual maturity. God’s will for us is to restore us in the image of Christ (Ro 8:28-29). For this purpose, God has given us the word of God and the Holy Spirit and works in all things in our lives. Christ’s image is formed through continuous battle with our old self, that is, the sinful nature. When our old self dies through obedience to God, we put on the new self and become spiritual men and women.

We should check where we are in this spiritual campaign. We should press on like Apostle Paul to be united with Christ by following Christ’s example in his death and resurrection (Php 3:10-12). Ephesians 4:22-24 reads, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” To put off our old self, often requires a spiritual battle to the point of shedding our blood. The only way to do this is to repent of loving our sinful nature more than God and give our hearts to God newly. The moment our old self dies, we experience the power of the resurrection and receive freedom in Christ.

Our inner spiritual enemies, such as pride, self-glory seeking, and lust, to name a few, have deep roots. To uproot them, we need a hydraulic hoe and dynamite. When we dig deep with the hoe of the word of God, we expose the root of our sin and the Holy Spirit blows it off by his power and transforms us to be a new creations. When we put on the new self, we can enter into life to the full which the Lord Jesus promised in John 10:10b, “…I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Which is our 2012 ministry key verse.

In order to conquer our hearts, we should also grow in love and righteousness until our own local church and the Christian community radiates the love of God. The kingdom of God comes when we obey the Lord’s new command, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (Jn 13:34). What a beautiful and precious community of brothers and sisters we have in our fellowship! Where can we find such wonderful friends in the world? Nowhere else, but in Christ! While focusing on our ministry, work, school and social life, we often miss the blessed love fellowship among those who love Jesus. Let’s continue building up a beautiful community of love among us so that the world may know God’s love through us. This is part of conquering our hearts with the gospel.

Second, conquering the land is entering the kingdom of Heaven following our conquering general, Jesus Christ. We can talk about the various “lands” that we need to conquer in this world, but by far, the most important land to conquer is the land that Jesus has already conquered for us, the Kingdom of God. Jesus conquered this land through his suffering, death and resurrection. (1 Cor 15:20-29) Jesus placed all of his enemies under his feet. That means sin, death and Satan and his cohorts. Jesus goes on ahead of us to prepare a place for us. We have assured victory because our Lord and Savior Jesus went ahead of us and fought for us and won the victory. All we need to do is repent and claim, through faith, what Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross. We need to follow him and dwell in the kingdom of God, even now, for the Kingdom of God is within you. When you dwell in the kingdom of God, Jesus will reign over you with his peace and his love. It sounds easy but not always. There are still many spiritual battles to engage as we walk by faith. When we have done everything to stand, God’s grace will be shown to be sufficient.

Third, exploring and conquering our own mission field. For us, it is the campus that we are ministering to, NIU and the grade schools and the people of DeKalb. The mission field is also our homes and work places that God has brought us into. God wants us to lift up our eyes and look at the Promised Land, both locally and globally and continue the conquest.
How do we know that our land is being conquered? It does not necessarily mean that there are 1000 people worshipping together to a fantastic praise band. It does not mean when 16,000 of us gather for a Bible conference at the Convo Center? To conquer our land means that the Gospel message is being faithfully preached there. It is occurs when God’s people are praying that Jesus may rule in the hearts of the people in that mission field. It is when one person is being changed and transformed by the grace of God, and that heart could be the one called to that mission field. It can not be measured in numbers.

Part lll. Reports of Exploration (13:26-14:9)

The 12 leaders returned with a huge cluster of grapes, some pomegranates and figs after exploring the 250 miles of the land. They said, “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey. Here is its fruit.” (13:27) People must have shouted with joy. But when they heard the explorers saying, “But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there,” (13:28) the atmosphere changed. Peoples’ hearts sunk within their chests. They were filled with fear. How could the Israelites ever conquer a land occupied by such people? .

At this time of crisis Caleb stepped up as a true leader. He silenced them, and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” (13:30) But the ten men countered him and said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” (31) And they spread among the Israelites a bad report. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” (32-33) What was their problem? Here, to “spread a bad report” means to “falsely accuse.” The land did not devour the people living in it, for if it did then those living in it, would have been ill-fed and weak. But that was not the case. They said, “All the people we saw are of great size.” They were exaggerating. They even exaggerated their weaknesses, reducing themselves to grasshoppers. (Which they were not!) When the ten leaders saw the land of Canaan with human eyes, they saw no possibility of victory in war, and so they gave up. Caleb, on the other hand, saw the same things the other explorers saw. But he could see the land with God’s eyes through the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him. He saw God at work among his people. He was convinced that God would use his people as His instrument and give them the land. So he could say, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it” (30).

All twelve experienced God’s power, character, and guidance together. Why then couldn’t the ten have the spirituality that Caleb and Joshua had? The problem was that these people had eliminated God from the equation. This was unreasonable. It is just as the Apostle Paul pointed out in 1 Corinthians 3:1 which reads, “1 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ.” There are believers who grow mature to live by the Spirit and believers who remain worldly, spiritually immature. What determines one’s spiritual maturity? It is one’s reverence for Jesus and their obedient attitude toward God. One who reveres God and lives before him experiences God in all things, learns from Him and thus…grows. On the other hand, one who eliminates God from the equation and sees things from a human point of view cannot grow spiritually.

We are fighting against secular humanism, materialism, the goddess of pleasure and the spirit of ambivalence in this post-modern era. From the time of inviting young people to Jesus to the time of raising them as disciples, we feel as if we are fighting with giants. When we see our mission field with human eyes, we are filled with negative thinking, fear and feel small and powerless. We are weak but God is strong. God is indeed great. When we fix our eyes on God, God becomes bigger and bigger in our minds and hearts and the problems become smaller and smaller until they disappear. And the Holy Spirit fills our minds and hearts with courage and conviction that “We can certainly triumph and conquer in Jesus’ name.” Amen.

People who heard the report of the ten leaders raised their voices and wept aloud all night. It was not tears of repentance and faith. It was tears of despair, anger and frustration. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron and said, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (14:2-3) “If only we had died in Egypt!”—this was the habitual grumble of the Israelites (Ex 14:11, 16:3, Nu 20:3). Think about the scene of two million people sitting and wailing under the light from the pillar of fire, which was a sign of God’s protection and love. This was a grave sin of forgetting the grace of God who had redeemed them from their miserable life of slavery. They even thought of going back to Egypt. Their reaction shows the tragedy of unbelief and leaving God out of the equation. Even though we forget all other things, we should not forget the grace of God who redeemed us.
These faithless people finally discussed about abandoning the place that God had led them and choosing a leader to take them back to Egypt. Moses and Aaron fell facedown before the congregation. (4-5) They were grieved. They might have expected God’s judgment at any moment. At this critical moment, Joshua and Caleb again stood up as true spiritual leaders and tore their clothes. In ancient times, clothes were rare and expensive. Therefore tearing clothes was a big decision as well as an expression of great sorrow and righteous anger. They said, “The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the LORD is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them.” (7-9). What can we learn from Joshua and Caleb?

First, faith that believes God’s promise. Joshua and Caleb had a conviction of conquest because they believed God’s promise. God had promised Abraham to give his descendants the land and had foretold their slavery in Egypt, their exodus and return to the Promised Land (Ge 15:7-21). God confirmed this promise to Isaac and Jacob and later said to Moses, “So I have come down to rescue them from the land of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey”—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (Ex 3:8). God surely keeps his word. Faith is 100% of trust in God’s promise. This is faith that pleases God. We have the Lord’s promise, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mt 28:19-20). When we believe in the Lord’s promise 100%, we can have the conviction and courage to challenge any situation and reveal God’s glory.

Second, faith in God’s sovereignty and power. Joshua and Caleb said, “If the LORD is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, … and will give it to us.” (14:8) To them, the strong enemies in the land were not a problem, for no one can stand against God if God leads his people into the land. If God Almighty, the Sovereign Lord goes ahead of us, nothing is impossible. We must believe this and do his work. When people says, “It is not possible,” we can say, “God can do it.”
How can we please God? We can please God by believing in him 100% (Heb 11:6). God is pleased with our obedience, devotion and shepherd heart. We should pray for raising 100,000 UBF missionaries by 2041 to evangelize the world’s major campuses by faith. We should pray for the pioneering of all of the campuses in our nation by faith. We should be praying for the evangelization of the students of NIU and the people of DeKalb. God is with us. He will lead us into the Promised Land and he will give it to us when we have faith that pleases God.

Third, victory in spiritual battle. Joshua and Caleb said, “Do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them.” (14:9) Other versions translate the latter part of this verse as “we will swallow them up.” Here we can see their appetite, confidence and desire to conquer in the Lord’s name. Joshua and Caleb were filled with the Holy Spirit because they defeated Satan’s attack. They were powerful servants of God. They remind us of the Lord’s promise, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you” (Ac 1:8).

Satan attacks us with arrows of doubt and fear whenever we try to do anything. When we are hit, we lose our strength and desire, and fall into negative thinking and complaints. As commanders and leaders in God’s army, we must first win the spiritual warfare against Satan by holding on to God’s words of promise. When the Holy Spirit works, the evil spirits of secular humanism, materialism, and carnal pleasure seeking run away. Ephesians 6:16-17 says, “Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can have a burning desire and vision from God and we can work by the power of God.
Joshua and Caleb warned the Israelites, “Only do not rebel against the LORD.” (14:9a) This verse teaches us that giving up the promised land due to unbelief is rebellion against God. Unbelief is a backward road that leads to failure and shame, while faith is a forward road that leads to victory and glory. In Christ we don’t have a backward road. The Holy Spirit points to only a forward road towards the Promised Land. Let’s not be afraid. Let’s not be disappointed because there seems to be little fruit in ministry. It’s all right if we love God with all our hearts and do what we should do each day by faith. We are doing what God wants us to do if we love our spouses, and our kids and those brought near to us. We are conquering our land when we raise the Bible students whom God gives us and our children to be spiritual men and women. God is working with us and He will fulfill His will in His way and in His time.

Part lll; Caleb’s Spirit

How did God see Caleb’s faith? Read verse 14:24. “But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.” The land Caleb went to was the hill country of Hebron. There lived the Anakites, the giants (Jos 14:12). God said, “my servant Caleb has a different spirit.” God was pleased with Caleb and promised that He would bring him into the land and his descendants would inherit it. Why could Caleb have a different spirit? God testified that Caleb followed God wholeheartedly. Here “wholeheartedly” means to fill a vacuum with something— 100%. Caleb filled his soul with God only. He did not allow anything else to occupy his heart along with God. He gave his whole heart to God. (Dt 6:5) God loved him and was pleased to dwell in him and wanted to bless him and his descendants. God leads those who follow Him wholeheartedly to the Promised Land and gives it to their descendants. Here we learn what kind of person God seeks. God does not seek able people. God seeks men and women whose hearts are wholly devoted to Him. 2 Chronicles 16:9a reads, “For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him….”

In today’s passage, we learned to obey God’s command to go and explore the land and be encouraged by what you will find. The land that God calls us to conquer is first our own hearts and then the various mission fields that God has led us to. We must thank Jesus for being our conquering general and leading us into the Promised Land of the Kingdom of God. Let’s also pray to have faith that pleases God, like Caleb and Joshua and engage our faith in order to be a blessing to all of God’s people.