Numbers 13-14: We are not Grasshoppers

There's a crowd of people camped in the dessert. They've been wandering through the wilderness for almost two years. There's not much out there, in this dessert/wilderness space. Food is hard to come by and water even scarcer. They've been making their way through the barren land slowly. Every day led by a cloud in the distance, every night guided by a pillar of fire. God has been faithful enough to insure that they survive, feeding them with bread from heaven (otherwise known as manna) and the occasional flock of falling quail. They've learned that when you have faith, fresh water can come sprouting out of rocks. And more than anything they have been sustained these past two years by a promise.

We're talking, of course, about the Hebrew people. God's chosen people, the Israelites as we find them in the book of Numbers 13. They've left Egypt and slavery behind them with a fanfare. Their freedom from oppression, from corruption, from Empire was marked by ten miraculous plagues and the shifting of a whole sea to let them pass. And they've spent the time since then wandering in a dessert place on their way to their promise land. And now they are almost there.

The promise that has given them hope is almost too good to be true. They've been promised a land flowing with milk and honey, a place they can call their own, somewhere where each family will have enough, each person can find fulfillment, and a new society can be built based on the laws given them at Mount Sinai. A place in which they can truly be thankful for what God has provided.

There's only one thing left to do before they move in – scout out the land and see how close the reality is to the promise God has given them. Moses,the man whose been leading the Israelites since they left Egypt, chooses one man from each tribe to do the job. We've got Shammua, Shphat, Igal, Palti, Gaddi, Ammiel, Sethur, Nahbi, Geuel, Caleb, and Hosea. Just before they leave, Moses takes the man named Hosea aside. Now Hosea in Hebrew means salvation, and Moses changes it at the last moment to Joshua, meaning Yaheweh's Salvation. Remember that.

So these 12 men go into the land they've been promised and scout it out. And 40 days later they return with their findings. Apparently this land was just as amazing as they had been promised – in Numbers 13:27 they report that the land “flows with milk and honey” and is abundant with fruit – just as promised. However there's a catch. There's something in the way. Coming to the promised land isn't going to be as easy as they would like. It's occupied. There are the Amalekites, the Hitties, the Jebusites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites and apparently a lot of these people seem bigger and tougher and much more powerful than the Israelites.

Caleb and the man newly named Joshua are not turned away by the difficulties that stand in their way. Caleb believes whole heartedly that with God's strength,they can overcome the obstacles in their path and occupy the promised land. In Numbers 14:7-8 Joshua argues that “the land is exceedingly good land” and “the Lord will bring us into this land and give it to us.”

But the other 10 out of 12 spies disagree. In the face of these obstacles, they loose faith in themselves and in God. Instead of seeing themselves as God sees them, as a holy people, God's treasured possession, chosen by God out of all the peoples on the earth (Deuteronomy 7:6), they call themselves insects. They get scared and they lose faith. In Numbers 13:33 the spies declare “to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” And the whole camp starts complaining and lamenting that they ever left Egypt. Egypt- where they were slaves to Paraoh.

So close to their promised land, the Israelites encounter one last challenge and they forget that they are worthwhile. They get scared and they want to give up. God has saved them again and again, but these people seem to have one huge insecurity complex. At the core, they have a really crappy self image. They can't seem to remember that God loves them, God cares for them, and God will continue to protect them. They forget that they are God's treasured possession and see themselves as insects, as grasshoppers. The land they have been promised is just over the river, but not only do the people believe they cannot overcome the obstacles on their way to the promised land, they don't believe they deserve to. And because of their lack of faith in God's salvation they are stuck wandering the dessert for a full 40 years waiting to enter the promised land, their place of fulfillment and sustenance.

I believe that each one of us is promised fulfillment in Christ. That for each of us there is a land flowing with milk and honey where we can rest in thanksgiving to our provider. I believe that we are all so important to God that God will stop at nothing to help us get to our promised land. I believe that in Jesus we have been freed from sin and death and shown a way to walk into a fulfilling and overwhelmingly wonderful life.

But I also think that sometimes the slavery of Egypt seems a lot more appealing. There are many reasons for this. The journey from slavery to freedom is a long one. Like the Israelite, there is a whole wilderness between Egypt and the land of fulfillment. And at the last minute, to actually walk into the promised land we have to defeat the giants. We get tired, we feel week, we don't think we have the strength to overcome the trials in our path, we become so focused on the giants that we don't see the promised land behind them, and sometimes we don't think that we deserve the opportunity for fulfillment.

I often feel trapped by circumstance. When people try to show me the promised land, or even ask me to dream about it, I let myself get trapped by the idea of Ammerites and the Canaanonites standing in my way. I build the obstacles so big, my own personal demons of gender roles, my fears of making a fuss, of not being liked, or not being seen as strong on the outside that they over shadow the goodness of the land behind them. And under all that hides the fear that I am not good enough to make it to the promised land. I feel like a grasshopper, instead of a precious treasure of God, and so I became a grasshopper. I become trapped by circumstance and ready to head back to the slavery of Egypt because there I wont have to think and fight for myself. And because I don't think I deserve more.

But Hosea was renamed Joshua before he went to spy on cannon. Salvation was renamed YHW-saves. because with God's strength we are strong and we can overcome the demons, Canaanotes, etc. that stand in our way. And in God's eyes we are never grasshoppers, we are treasures, we are precious, and we are loved infinitely . We are loved so much that God will do anything to help us get to our promised land – even if it means hanging around with us in the dessert for another 40 years.