June 26, 2016 - The Twelve Spies

TONY & MICHELLE PAWLAK

MEMORY VERSE

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:9b) 3pts!

Does God keep his promises?  Of course He does!  So what is there to worry about?  If we live believing God’s promises to us then we never have anything to be afraid of, right?  Absolutely!  Sometimes though, God will call us to do something that can be scary.  Even though we know we have a mighty God that always keeps His promises, it is easy to forget that and become afraid when we have to face a scary situation.  Is it okay to run away from what God has told us to do because we are scared?  No!  If we do, we may miss out on the wonderful things that God has promised us.  Today’s story will make this easier to understand.

For the past few weeks we have been discussing God’s promises, namely the promise he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that He would make a great nation of their family in the Promised Land and that all nations would be blessed through them.  God began keeping His promise by sending Jacob/Israel and his sons to Egypt.  Four hundred years later, Pharaoh had enslaved all of the children of Israel.  God moved on to the next stage in keeping His promise, getting the Israelites out of Egypt and heading toward the Promised Land in Canaan.  Ten devastating plagues on Egypt later, the Pharaoh finally let the Israelites leave and, after God split the Red Sea for one final escape from Pharaoh, they were off to the Promised Land. 

Finally, the Israelites arrived on the very edge of Canaan.  God had given the Canaanites four hundred years to turn from their evil ways but they didn’t.  Now God was going to give their land to Israel. God told Moses to send twelve spies, one from each of the twelve

tribes of Israel, to go and spy out the land and bring back a report of what they could expect.  Over the next forty days, the spies went all throughout Canaan.  They saw giant people called the Anakim. They also saw cities that had enormous walls around

them making them hard to attack. Then they checked out the crops and found bunches of grapes so huge that they had to attach one to a pole so that two people could carry it back to show the Israelites.  It was a very good
land with cities, farms, wells, and everything you could ever want or need.  The spies knew, however, that it would not be an easy task.

When they came back to the Israelites, they showed them the grapes and told of the wonderful things that they had seen.  They also told of the dangers of giants and the challenges of trying to defeat walled cities.  Ten of the spies were so afraid that they told the people that it was too dangerous to go into the land.  One of the spies, Caleb, said differently.  He said, “We

should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” (Numbers 13:30b)  The ten spies said, “But the people are so big that we must look like grasshoppers to them! They are too strong for us to defeat!” 

The ten spies fear spread to the rest of the Israelites. They began to ask, “Why did God bring us here just so we could die?”  They even talked about replacing Moses with another leader who would take them back to Egypt!  Caleb and the

twelfth spy, Joshua, were angered by the people acting like cowards that they tore their clothes to show how upset they were.  Then they stood up and said to the people, “It is a very good land.  We saw it ourselves!  If we obey God he will give it to us so, whatever you do, don’t rebel against God!  God is with us, not with them.  Do not be afraid of the people because nothing can help them against our God.”

This made the people so angry that they were about to stone Joshua and Caleb to death but God stepped in just in time. God’s glory appeared over the Tabernacle which meant that He wanted to speak to Moses.  The people stopped

what they were doing and waited to hear what God had to say.  Moses went in and God said to him, “How long will these people not respect me? How long will they refuse to believe in me? They refuse even though I have done many signs among them.  So I will strike them down with a plague. I will destroy them. But I will make you (Moses) into a greater and stronger nation than they are.” (Numbers 14:11-12 NIrV)

Moses said, “But God, if You do this then the Egyptians will hear about it and tell even the people in Canaan.  They all know that You have used Your mighty power to save us from Egypt and that You have been with us this whole way.  They will think that You failed to keep Your promise to give us this land and so You killed them all.  You said You are slow to anger, full of love, and you desire to forgive sin.  So, instead, please forgive this people one more time. 

God agreed to forgive the people again but said that they

would still need to be punished.  First, God made the ten spies that spread fear through the Israelites get very sick and die.  Then He said that, because the people refused to trust God’s promises and instead gave in to fear, the people would not be allowed to have the Promised Land.  Instead, they would have to wander around the wilderness for forty years; one year for every day the spies were in the land.  Everyone over the age of twenty would die in the wilderness and their children would receive the land that God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel. 

When the people heard this they said, “Okay, we’re ready to obey now and take the land like God told us to.”  But it was too late.  They had missed their chance.  They tried to take the land but God was not with them and they were

quickly beaten.  So the Israelites turned around and went into the wilderness for forty years where everyone over twenty years old died.  The only two exceptions were Joshua and Caleb, the two spies that were strong and courageous and believed

God’s promise.

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