A very familiar video clip. (Used clip from first Star Wars movie, a New Hope, at the beginning of the movie from just before Darth Vader comes aboard Ship until R2D2 and C3PO escape in pod) Most of you are the right age to have seen the original Star Wars in the theatre; I saw it five times when it first came out. As I’ve watched the re-releases as well as the latest episodes I have developed a little more insight into my two favourite characters, the two androids, C3P0 and R2D2. I realized that I wouldn’t mind having a whole church full of R2D2s. What a neat little guy, you know he’s the one that looks like a trash can on wheels. R2 is always looking on the bright side of things, always ready to help out where he can, sees a solution in every problem a silver lining behind every cloud. His friend C3P0 is the cyborg, looks a little bit like a human and has some of the worst human traits. He’s always looking on the dreary side of life, doesn’t want to help anyone but himself and sees a problem in every solution a cloud in front of every silver lining. Marlin Mull was in charge of new church development for the Wesleyan Church when we began BCC and he once told me that there were two types of people in every church, the go-ers and the whoa-ers. Well R2D2 is a typical go-er and C3P2 is a classic whoa-er.
People like that have always been around. In the scripture that was read this morning we got a great glimpse into human nature. Most of us know the story. Moses has sent 12 Spies into the Promised Land with instructions to do what spies do best, spy. He wanted to know who lived there, were they strong or weak were there lots of them or just a few, did they live in little villages or big fortified cities. What was the economy like was it a wealthy land or a poor land. And when he got all through giving instructions he said, “Oh by the way bring me back some fruit.” Now I don’t know why Moses wanted fruit, maybe it was so he could see what the produce was like or maybe it was because he hadn’t had a grape for a while. I don’t know
Well you now what happened right? They spied out the land, found grapes so big it took two men to carry back one cluster and they came back to report what they had found. We can read about their findings in Numbers 13:27This was their report to Moses: “We arrived in the land you sent us to see, and it is indeed a magnificent country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is some of its fruit as proof. From that point on the story progresses like a good news bad news joke.
The spies start by saying “What a land, you just wouldn’t believe what a beautiful land it was. And the fruit, I mean just look at this there are grapes as big as softballs.” And everyone was excited and they were like “Wow this is great, Margaret pack your suitcase we going to the Promised Land.” Not so fast because the rest of the story comes out in the next verse Numbers 13:28 But (one of the hard and fast rules of Biblical Exegesis is that after the but comes the truth.) the people living there are powerful, and their cities and towns are fortified and very large. We also saw the descendants of Anak who are living there!
“Wow, hey Margaret you really didn’t want to go to the Promised Land anyways did you?” Now this may have been a majority opinion but it wasn’t a unanimous opinion. You see Joshua and Caleb said “Hey if that’s the land that God wants us to have then that’s the land that God will give us.” You see that is the reality of life, some people are eternal optimists, like R2D2 and others are eternal pessimists like C3P0. The optimist is the person who sees the glass half full, the pessimist sees the glass half empty. There are other reactions to the glass as well, the idealist says “the glass should be full”, the anarchist says “break the glass” and the capitalist says “sell the glass”.
An optimist is defined as the guy who fell off a twenty story building and when he went by the third floor he was heard to say, “So far, so good”. On the other hand the pessimist is the guy who blows out the candle just to prove how dark the room is.
The fact that ten out of twelve of the spies were pessimists probably isn’t all that surprising when we look at society as a whole. That however shouldn’t be the case with the people of God. It’s unfortunate though that shouldn’t and “isn’t” are two different words. You would think that after all the miracles that God had performed bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt. Starting with the parting of the Red Sea, and feeding the nation with Manna and Quail from heaven. The water that poured out of solid rock and the column of smoke that guided them during the day and pillar of fire they followed at night. You’d think that with all of that in their history that even the pessimists would have been convinced, but nooooooo. They still doubted the power of God to provide what he had promised.
I’m pretty sure that when most of us come upon a book in the Bible named “Numbers” that our first thought is “Wow this is going to be exciting, it must be a sequel to the book of letters.” In reality though it’s kind of a neat book. The first ten chapters are very similar to the book of Leviticus in that they contain various laws concerning worship, the priesthood and offerings. But from chapter eleven on it tells us how God provided quail for the people of Israel to eat while they were in the dessert and how water poured out of a rock to satisfy their thirst. It is here we read about the venomous snakes the tormented the people and how Moses was told to craft a bronze snake and put it on his staff, and when he held it up those who looked upon it were healed. In Numbers we read about the prophet Balaam and how his donkey spoke to him and how the Israelites defeated the Midianites.
And it is in this book that we discover the 12 spies going into the Promised Land and how when they returned they spread discouragement among the people and then because of the lack of faith amongst the people God told them that nobody over 20 years old would enter the Promised Land. The book of numbers records how they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness, one year for each day the spies had spent in the Promised Land.
Because of the census’ that were taken in this book the English title is Numbers, however the Hebrew title was probably more apt, translated it is “In the Dessert”, that pretty well says it all.
Tradition holds that the Author was Moses and if you’ve been keeping count this is the fourth book that Moses is credited with. Time wise we are told that this was probably penned just before the death of Moses, which would put it around 1400 B.C. and covers a time period of about 40 years, actually if you want to be a little more precise it covers a time period of 38 years and 9 months.
Why was it written? Moses wrote this book at the end of the Israelites’ 40 years of wandering in the desert, first to show God’s judgment but also to reveal God’s faithfulness and patience with his People. I think after all their grumbling and complaining if I had of been God I would have said “Too bad, so sad, so long” and found me a new chosen people. But that isn’t what God did, his covenant was with these people and he had promised them Canaan and one way or another they were going to get Canaan.
For just a few minutes this morning I want to focus on Joshua and Caleb. After all I’d be willing to wager that nobody here can even remember the names of the other ten. So why waste our time on people we can’t remember.
Norman Vincent Peale might say that Joshua and Caleb were simply displaying the power of positive thinking. Robert Schuler would say they were exhibiting the power of possibility thinking. The truth of the matter is that is that Caleb and Joshua simply had faith to believe that if God said it then God would do it. Now in retrospect we can say, “Hey I knew that God would give them the Promised Land.” No problem that’s what my daddy calls 20/20 hindsight. It’s amazing how accurate we can be when we make predictions about things that have already happened. However the heroes in our story didn’t have the luxury of that option, they couldn’t rely on what they could see. Remember what Yogi Berra said? “It’s hard to make predictions especially about the future.” Then again can you remember how faith was defined in the New Testament? It was in the book of Hebrews Chapter 11 verse 1 What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.
Caleb and Joshua weren’t simply idealists proclaiming that the glass should be full, instead they were visionary realists. They didn’t ignore the problems or try to gloss them over; instead they looked beyond the problems to the solutions. How about it can you see only problems or do you see solutions to those problems?
We are standing on the threshold of a new chapter in the history of Bedford Community Church. Can we be like Joshua, Caleb and R2D2 and see The Possibilities that God has in store for us. On one hand we need to see and recognize the expectations of God. God expects us to grow. He expects us to fulfill the great commission and to reach people for Jesus Christ. Those things are expected of all churches. And He will never expect of us things that we can’t deliver. You all right? And so he has made a promise concerning the power to fulfill his expectations. In the book of Acts 1:8 Jesus said But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. ”
That isn’t something I made up. That my friends is the promise of almighty God. And He didn’t say you might receive power, he said you will receive power. And he didn’t say you might be witnesses he said you would be witnesses. You all right? Those are the expectations and the promises of God, he expects us to grow and he will give us what we need to grow. When we did our refining the focus survey one of the areas that was identified as a weak area was a lack of our own building. Overwhelmingly you told us that your unchurched friends did not feel comfortable coming to a rented facility. People who own homes that cost ¼ to a ½ million dollars wonder why we don’t have our own building. What’s the problem?
Here we stand in the Wildness, God has provided for us up to this point. Just as God provided for the Israelites during their escape from Egypt He has provided for Bedford Community Church. There have been times that as a baby church we have faced financial obstacles that have seemed truly insurmountable and yet God has stepped in and intervened in ways that can only be described as miraculous.
We can truly say "God has been good" but we are still in the wilderness and I believe it is time to move on. This is not where we are supposed to remain this is not the future God has planned for us. And so the time has come, we have wandered in the wilderness for long enough and the time has come to enter into the Promised Land.
But remember Joshua and Caleb not only saw the Promised Land but they realized that it would require something from them if they were going to occupy it. They knew that it would cost the Israelites something if they were going to enter into the Promised Land. There were battles to be waged and sacrifices to be made. Their entry into the land of milk and honey wasn’t going to be on a path of rose petals. Sometimes we presume, and sometimes we’re taught that if we’re in the will of God then we’ll never have any problems and that my friends is a lie of the Devil.
The difference is that Joshua and Caleb saw the possibilities the other ten were like C3PO and all they could see were The Problems. The cities were so big, the soldiers so strong, we are so weak how can we possibly succeed.
It would be easy to tell you that after we build then everything will be perfect, not. To tell you the truth I am terrified at the thought of building. I think about building and all that it entails, and I know I’ve been through two building projects already in my ministry, and I think we have it easy; we have no power bill, no heat bill, no insurance bill. At the end of the day we give them our cheque for forty eight dollars, set the alarm lock the door and we are done.
And if that is what you want as a church then let me know so I can polish up my resume because I am not staying in the wilderness.
I know that it won’t be easy; if it was easy we would have done it years ago. But God never said that it would be easy.
And yes it will take sacrifice to build a church, nobody is going to come along and hand us a million dollars, although that would be nice. And that sacrifice is going to have to come from us. I love this cartoon. “Are we glad to hear that you don’t know where you’ll get the money you need. For a minute there we were afraid you wanted to get it from us.”
You say “Denn, where will we ever get the money?”
God has given me the vision and he’s given you the provision, do you believe that? What are we worth? What has God entrusted us with? If we were to add up the value of all of our homes what kind of figure would we end up with? A million dollars? 2 million dollars? Maybe 4 or 5 million dollars. What if we added in our cars and motorcycles, our furniture, our TVs and DVD players, all of our computers and toys and then added our stocks our bonds, our RRSPs our savings? What would we be worth then? And no I’m not going to ask you to sign over everything you own to the church, but when we think of what we are worth as a people then the thoughts of spending eight or nine hundred thousand dollars on our God can’t seem that outrageous.
If this was something we really, really, really wanted to do what would we be willing to give? You’ve been there. When there was a car, a vacation a house or a toy that you really wanted then you scraped and saved and sacrificed so you could have that “whatever.”
Like the Israelites we have no land and we have no home but we do have a Promise. Their promise was found in Numbers 14:7-9 Joshua and Caleb said to the community of Israel, “The land we explored is a wonderful land! And if the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us safely into that land and give it to us. It is a rich land flowing with milk and honey, and he will give it to us!”
And what is our promise? How about Luke 1:37 For nothing is impossible with God. So what is impossible for God? Nothing, do you think building a church in Bedford would be impossible for God? Or how about Philippians 4:13 For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need. What can we do “Everything” let’s read that together. Can we build a church? We can do everything. What is impossible for God? Nothing.
So where are you at today? We have a choice: do we stay in the wilderness or do we step out in faith. I have been to the Promised Land and the fruit is good and I hope you will come with me as I lead BCC there.
Hope you found this message helpful, PowerPoint may be available contact me at denn@bccnet.ca
If you could build a church for a dollar. . .
Would you?
You can!
www.helpbuildachurch.com
