Sermon of the Month - June 2009
Old Testament Hope 4: Land of Promise
(Readings: Number 13:7 – 14:4 and Deuteronomy 8:1-20)
Introduction
When we say the Old Testament is different to the New, mostly we home in on the clarity of the New Testament challenge of love. Jesus said ‘Love your enemies!’ while Old Testament heroes like Joshua, David and Elijah seem to go around killing theirs.
But there’s another major difference, which is connected, and we can see this with tonight’s theme. We’re looking at the Old Testament hope, and you don’t get far in the Bible before you find this very Old Testament expression of hope: the land of promise. It’s already there in Genesis with the promise to Abraham, for example in Gen.15:7: “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land and take possession of it.” It’s at the heart of Exodus in a way. The people are to leave Egypt, and the oppression they now experience there, and in his time before the burning bush, God says to Moses, I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites – a land flowing with milk and honey. And this is spelt out more in Numbers and Deuteronomy.
1. The blessing
Deuteronomy is pitched as Moses retelling the major events of Exodus and Numbers, the Ten Commandments, the story of the spies were heard from Numbers and much else, together with many of the laws and regulations to govern their lives and their community.
Deuteronomy Chapter 8 homes in on this promised land. It reminds the people of God’s blessing in the past, and how this blessing was a bit of a two-edged sword. Where the people rebelled they knew hunger; but then God fed them with manna, a ‘bread from heaven’ – “to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deut.8:3.) Our blessing is from God, and if we want to know blessing, we need to turn to God. The chapter spells out the agricultural and mineral blessings of the land: “streams...pools of water...springs...wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey...iron and...copper... silver and gold” (Deut 8:7-9, 13).
The blessing is real; and in this very Old Testament context it is material. But it is also spiritual.
2. The spiritual dimension
There is a spiritual dimension. The blessing is real, but it is dependent on God, and so Deuteronomy 8 makes clear that this gift to the people, this act of God’s blessing towards his chosen people, is not indefinite and unconditional. They are challenged not to be complacent, and to imagine that their blessing is due to their own hard work, not to forget God. If they try to live without God, then eventually they would experience life without God, and know the absense of his blessing. It is a sharp reminder which needed to be put, because too often that is just what happened.
Now the expression of the blessing in the Old Testament is put in terms of a geographical land, the land of Israel. And that is of course so different to our own situation. God does not promise us a geographical land. Jesus came proclaiming a kingdom of course, but it was not the kingdom of Israel, nor was it world conquest. In the temptations he directly faced and rejected that challenge. It is the kingdom of God. And Jesus spoke in many sayings and parables about the kingdom of God. And while people will rightly have different ideas on what some of that means in detail, the basics are clear: the kingdom of God is not a geographical area, is the realm where God is honoured as king, where he reigns, and that is in our lives.
Does this challenge of Deut.8, centred so much on the land, therefore have nothing to say to us? I wouldn’t agree with that. God’s blessing is given freely, but it needs to be received. Where the Israelites tried to live without God’s blessing they lost it. And the same is true in our very different circumstances. Jesus said, “I will build my church”, and God wants to bless his church; he wants to bless us here with growth, and wisdom, and the gifts of love, the gifts and fruit of the Spirit. These are freely given and ready to be received. But they do need to be received. If instead we rely on our own brilliance, pursuing life, including life in the church, as if everything depends on us, and forgetting God, then we lose out on God’s blessing.
And it is at this point that I think it would be helpful to go back to that earlier episode. In Deuteronomy the story of the spies is told briefly in the opening chapter. In Numbers we hear more, as the story unfolds in Numbers 13 and 14. We have just read a section from the middle of the story.
3. The Cost of Anxiety
What Numbers 13 and 14 shows is the cost of anxiety. With the great exceptions of Caleb and Joshua, the spies come back admitting that the land is indeed full of produce. But it is also full of people who are well armed. “We even saw the descendants of Anak there”. In other words, the giants.
The people are on the threshold of the promised land. They have been promised the land by God. God has shown them that he can defeat the most powerful nation on earth, the Egyptians, so they have what should be enough evidence, but the spies and the people at large panic.
This episode shows us something about the nature of anxiety, how it affects us, and what results from bowing to it – and a clue or two on how to avoid it.
- Num.13:28 shows their fear. The land looks good – but: there is a powerful but: “But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw the descendants of Anak there”; v.33 taking this further: “We felt as small as grasshoppers” (Num.13:33, GNB).
- Num.14:2-4 shows the effect of this panic: it would be better to go back to Egypt. The safety of familiar slavery, than tackling this new obstacle.
- As the story unfolds, we see Moses pleading with the people – to no avail. Then he pleads with God, who forgives, but who also declares that only those spies who dared trust him, Caleb and Joshua, will live to see the promised land. It will only be the children’s generation that enters. The 40 years of desert wandering are now set in train.
- Finally the chapter ends with a futile attempt by the people to tackle the Canaaites without God’s blessing. Needless to say it ends in blood failure.
So what does this show? The fruit of giving in to such anxiety is:
- inactivity. The “But” the ten spies expressed led to them doing nothing.
- disobedience. When we step out of God’s will, we don’t just stand still we drift or lurch backwards: the Israelites were in danger of lurching all the way back to Egypt.
- missed opportunity. If we let anxiety rule our lives, then we miss out on the promised land – and our equivalent experience of God’s blessing today. And it’s no use like the surly Israelites attempting to take by storm what we have neglected to receive from God.
4. The Antidote to Anxiety
So what is the antidote to anxiety?
Jesus himself of course famously challenges us not to be anxious, in his Sermon on the Mount Matthew 6:25-34; “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear...do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” What a challenge! Karl Barth, the great theologian, once commented on this: “If we ever take the risk (and it is a risk) of preaching on Matthew 6:25-34, we at once meet with all kinds of sullen or dispirited or unwilling reprimands (expressed or unexpressed), and most of all, if we are honest, from our own hearts and mins. For how can we help taking care for our life? How can we model ourselves on the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field?”
What he is reminding us is that while the Scriptures encourage us, as Paul put it, with what sounds like a command: “Do not be anxious about anything.” But it seems we can’t command our feelings away.
The real challenge is that we can let worry direct our lives, as the Israelites did, or we can act in trusting God. Paul, when he said “Do not be anxious about anything, did not leave it there. He added: but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6.) We can simply accede to our worries, or we can do something else: we can turn to God, we can pray, we can change our worries into prayers. Jesus of course also gave us a challenge to do something other than worry. Instead of wrrying, he said: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Instead of worrying, and letting our lives be comsumed by anxiety, let God shape and re-shape our lives, as we dare to trust him in everything.