Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] How many people love reading the stories of the Old Testament?
[00:00:03] Yeah.
[00:00:05] Filled with not fairy tales, but stories of real people with real problems who served a real God, who made a difference.
[00:00:14] Ordinary men and women wrestling with fear, doubt, worry, weakness, and stepping out. Anyway, I like that God doesn't hide the failures in the Bible. Imagine if all those Old Testament stories were only the miracles, only the amazing moments of faith. But God, right throughout all of the stories also has all of the failures, all the missteps, all of the lack of obedience, all of the failure. I love that God puts all of that in the story to remind us that anyone else failed in their walk with God. Come on, anyone?
[00:00:47] Anyone taking a stumble. Even this week, it's like, oh, God, I've gone there again. I've doubted you. Or I've got upset, I've got angry, I've got jealous, or whatever. Whatever it is, we are always that work in progress. But God is a God that takes us in our weakness and he does something great in our life.
[00:01:04] Last week we learned about strengthening ourselves in the Lord, that we often will go to the power source of the world rather than the power source of God. And we try and plug ourselves into the world so much, and then we try and plug ourselves into God and we realize we've got a disconnect from the world and find our strength in God.
[00:01:24] This morning, I want to talk about a man who was described in the Bible as having a different spirit. Imagine being known as one who has a different spirit. Not that he's talented, not that he's doing well in business, but that he has a different spirit. There's something about it, and I don't know about you, but there are people in this congregation. I look at you and I talk with you, and there is a different spirit that you carry to. To the spirit of the world.
[00:01:52] If you've got a Bible, would you open it to numbers, chapter 13? We're gonna start in numbers. We're gonna close in Joshua. At the end of my message this morning, Israel, they're standing at the boundary of the promised land.
[00:02:05] You gotta understand, this moment has been centuries in the making.
[00:02:09] From Abraham, the promise was given.
[00:02:12] I'm gonna make you a father of many nations. I'm gonna take you into a land. I'm gonna give it to you. Wherever your feet go, that's where I'm going to give this land to you.
[00:02:21] For 400 years, they went right through to this point of slavery. With generation after generation, it was another. No, it's not this year. It's not this generation. It's not this generation.
[00:02:34] Can you imagine how discouraged they would have been? And then God sends a deliverer. And Moses and Aaron go and stand before Pharaoh and says, God wants the people to be set free.
[00:02:44] Through the miraculous, the plagues, and the signs and wonders, they are released and they find their way out to the Red Sea. God parts the Red Sea.
[00:02:55] They go through, and Pharaoh's army is swallowed up by the water as it goes back across the thirsty. And they say, we're going to die of thirst. You brought us all the way out here. And God provides water out of a rock.
[00:03:07] A couple of times they said, we don't have any food to eat. So God provides manna and quail, and he leads them by fire and by a pillar of cloud and fire.
[00:03:19] God does the miraculous in their lives. And they are standing on the boundary of their promised land.
[00:03:28] God says to Moses, Numbers 13:2. The Lord said to 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.
[00:03:40] Notice the words, send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving.
[00:03:46] There is a promise that God gives to us. And one thing we can be certain of the promises of God is when he gives a promise, he fulfills it.
[00:03:56] However, he also asks us to walk out our part of that promise. Very seldom will God just hand something to us.
[00:04:05] He says, walk in faith, trust me. Walk a journey, take another step. And that's our participation in the miracle that God wants to do. We really felt this year, this is a year of miracles.
[00:04:19] Some of us are thinking it's the big, big, big miracles. I think it's the daily steps that we take as a disciple of Jesus, saying yes to him and no to the world.
[00:04:30] Those are big steps and really significant steps to take.
[00:04:34] So the promise already existed. They just had to step into it. So 12 leaders go in. They see fruit, they see abundance, they see an opportunity in this land. And so they come back with the report.
[00:04:46] Numbers 13, verses 26 to 29. They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account. We went into the land to which he sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey. Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak There. The Amalekites live in the Negev. The Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Termites, the Marmites, the Vegemites live in the hill country. Just checking whether you're listening.
[00:05:26] And the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.
[00:05:30] Do you hear that? The land is good.
[00:05:34] But before we go any further, can I ask, does anyone have one of those? We've all got buts, obviously. But the but with one T.
[00:05:46] Do we have those?
[00:05:50] I would love to be more generous to people, but my bills are piling up.
[00:05:56] I would love to have a better marriage, but you don't know my spouse.
[00:06:01] We know you.
[00:06:04] I want to forgive, but they hurt me so badly.
[00:06:11] I want to step out in faith, but the risk is far greater than I'm prepared to take.
[00:06:18] God's promises are often stalled by a single word.
[00:06:22] But what we see here is two spirits in the same situation, same opportunity presented, and there's two different responses.
[00:06:32] Ten responded with fear and two responded with faith.
[00:06:38] Now, can anyone tell me the other 10 people in those spies? Does anyone know even one of the names of those ten spies? The other ten? I don't. I can't even tell you. I mean, they're in there, but I haven't. I haven't taken the time to remember their names. Can anyone tell me the two who came back and brought a good report? Shout them out.
[00:07:00] Joshua and Caleb. Caleb and Joshua.
[00:07:03] They saw faith. With faith, they believe that God would be good for his promise.
[00:07:11] Listen to this. Verse 30 to 33. Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, we should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.
[00:07:21] But the men who had gone up with him said, we can't attack these people. They are stronger than we are. And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, the land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there of a great size. We saw the Nephilim there, the descendants of Anak that came from Nephilim. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes. And we look the same to them.
[00:07:45] So Caleb says, we can do it. Let's go at once. Let's go and take this land. It's ours for the taking. The others said, they're too strong and we look like grasshoppers.
[00:07:55] Not that we are grasshoppers, but we look like grasshoppers. My perception of myself is I'm too small and insignificant for this to be a Reality.
[00:08:07] Have we ever said that before? Have we ever declared that of ourselves that I'm not good enough?
[00:08:12] That's true. I'm not. But God is.
[00:08:16] And so we define whether or not the miracle will take place based on our ability and our strength and our size. Since when has my size and strength been enough to get a miracle across the line?
[00:08:30] It's not.
[00:08:32] If I could manufacture a miracle, there would be some kind of power in me.
[00:08:37] But there isn't. But there is power in an all sufficient God who speaks life into situations and says, you step and I will come through and I will defeat the giants. I will come through. I will bring the miracle to being.
[00:08:51] God says, are you living in faith?
[00:08:55] Are you living in fear?
[00:08:58] Fear distorted their vision.
[00:09:00] How quickly have they forgotten the Red Sea?
[00:09:03] How quickly have they forgotten the water gushing out of the rock? Waking up every morning to find manna on the ground for them to eat.
[00:09:12] Quail coming to sustain them.
[00:09:15] The miracles that took place. They've forgotten already what God has done.
[00:09:20] And the people begin to grumble.
[00:09:23] They even say, wasn't Egypt better?
[00:09:25] Wouldn't it be good to go back to where we were before those leeks and onions? Oh, I just love some leeks and onions right now.
[00:09:33] Now, I don't mind a good vegetable soup on a cold winter's day, but if our goal is vegetables and slavery, I don't know, I want a little bit more than that.
[00:09:46] But they were longing for something that they had before.
[00:09:50] And there's a terrifying statement that was true back then and sadly could be true for us today.
[00:09:57] Slavery can start to look safer than faith.
[00:10:03] Slavery can start to look safer than faith.
[00:10:08] Sometimes when we've been walking with God for a little while, the heat gets turned up.
[00:10:14] Anyone experience that?
[00:10:17] It's like you're kind of enjoying more mountaintops than valleys. And we go, God is good. God is great. Praise him. And then there's a big, long, long valley which we will walk through. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death because there's another mountain we'll climb one day. But though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us. His rod and his staff comfort us.
[00:10:47] But often we can find ourselves in those deep, dark valleys and those trials and those challenges and they become greater than ever before.
[00:10:56] And we can find ourselves, I hate to say it, longing for where we were, where we were chained up and bound up by sin and that lifestyle that God rescued us from. We even feel like we might be safer back in that Place, heaven forbid.
[00:11:16] God has called us out of that. We're no longer a slave to fear. We're a child of God who's walking into the promises.
[00:11:25] In faith, I want to encourage us today, there will be a wrestle for the rest of your life.
[00:11:33] When it comes to living in sin and walking in righteousness, that's called a battle of the flesh.
[00:11:39] Sin just feels a bit too good to ignore it. That's the reality of life.
[00:11:46] If sin wasn't so intriguing and enticing, we wouldn't want it.
[00:11:51] But the devil wants to grab us and bring us back into this place of slavery.
[00:11:55] Faith says, I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
[00:12:01] I can have that. I can experience that. Christ has set me free.
[00:12:07] The old has gone, the new has come. I'm a new creation in God.
[00:12:11] Joshua and Caleb pleaded in Numbers 14, Verse 7 to 9, the land is exceedingly good. The Lord is with us. Do not be afraid.
[00:12:21] You know what they did after that empowering sermon?
[00:12:25] They said, let's stone them.
[00:12:28] No one's picking up rocks this morning, I hope, but they're like, hey, stop being so positive. We want our leeks and onions. Let's stone them.
[00:12:41] Have you encountered that when you step out in faith?
[00:12:44] For many of you, you launched out as a brand new disciple of Christ.
[00:12:48] You had an encounter and a moment with God, and I pray that someone would even have that today.
[00:12:54] But then there was a moment where there was this pull from even your friends saying, hey, we miss the guy that used to party so hard that you'd pass out in the middle of the night.
[00:13:07] We miss the guy that we're losing you.
[00:13:12] We're losing you to something we know is better, but we don't want to lose you.
[00:13:17] You ever felt that, ever walked that, experienced that?
[00:13:22] And that lure, that pull back in the temptation of the whatever it is, the alcohol, the drugs, the relationship, the chasing, the pursuing of stuff rather than the things of purpose.
[00:13:36] The battle's real and there's a warning that we see in the story. Yes, God's grace is available for all of us.
[00:13:44] How many people have had more chances to find your feet again? And God's given you more opportunities to walk in obedience than we even deserve. Come on, give me a wave if that's you. And that's your story.
[00:13:56] Yes. And yet he says, walk again with me. Repent. Come back to me. Turn from your old ways and just. Let's get back on the journey again. Let's take another step in our discipleship journey.
[00:14:08] But then God speaks. He says, not one of this generation will enter the land.
[00:14:15] What a horrible, horrible piece of news to receive.
[00:14:19] 400 years of slavery right on the edge of the promised land. And God says, no one from this generation is going to make it into the land.
[00:14:29] But God also has significant buts in our world and in our life and in scripture. Because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land quickly. I want to look at two things that scripture tells us.
[00:14:49] This passage about why Caleb is different and why we can carry that same different spirit.
[00:14:56] First thought, a different spirit sees the future with faith. It's all about perspective and how you see things.
[00:15:04] Do we see things as God sees them, or do we see them from a negative lens?
[00:15:09] A father had two twin daughters, and one of them was the eternal optimist. Like, everything was awesome.
[00:15:17] Just like the song in the Lego Movie, Everything is awesome.
[00:15:21] The other daughter, completely opposite. Everything was horrible, everything was bad.
[00:15:26] Now, dad wanted to kind of balance and get a little bit of an equilibrium between these two. So he trialled on their birthday.
[00:15:33] He put every toy imaginable into the bedroom of the pessimist.
[00:15:41] Maybe this will just make you feel encouraged and excited about life.
[00:15:45] In the optimist room, he put a whole pile of horse manure.
[00:15:50] Like, okay, so wakes up the next morning, walks into the first room of the pessimist, and all of the toys are left unopened.
[00:16:02] And she's sitting there crying.
[00:16:04] Why are you crying? I've got all these wonderful gifts. She says, but what if I break them?
[00:16:09] And what if I don't have enough batteries? What if the batteries run out? And. And you've spent so much money and just so negative. He just walks to the next room, and as he gets into the room, he hears these squeals of delight.
[00:16:22] And he walks in and he sees this daughter throwing manure up in the air.
[00:16:27] It's like, why are you so excited about manure in your bedroom? She says, dad, with all this manure in here, there's got to be a pony in here somewhere.
[00:16:42] Come on. How we see things really, really matters.
[00:16:46] Obviously, just a bit of fun in that one. But we have to start seeing things from God's perspective.
[00:16:51] If God has promised he is good and he is faithful, he will bring it through. But he also asks us to take some steps.
[00:16:59] Didn't mean there wouldn't be a battle for Caleb. He knew he was going to have to fight. He was okay with the fight.
[00:17:06] But what Caleb understood is that because it was God's promise. Guess who gets to be at the head of the fight?
[00:17:13] God.
[00:17:14] Because God fights the battles for us that we can't.
[00:17:17] Yes, he asked us to engage in the battle, but the end of the day, it's his fight.
[00:17:22] So he will be at the head of the battle and he will take care of the victory.
[00:17:27] Caleb didn't deny the giants. He just recognized that God was bigger than the giants.
[00:17:33] Come on, anyone see a giant in their life at the moment? Come on, give us a wave if that's you.
[00:17:37] It could be relationships, it could be money. It could be your employment students. What do I do next? What's my next step? Some of you are putting job applications in. What do I do next? What's the call of God for me in this next season?
[00:17:52] And they can feel like Goliath's, but God is bigger and we've got to believe that he is bigger. And in faith, see our future with a different spirit.
[00:18:05] Fear focused people ask, what if it doesn't work?
[00:18:08] Faith filled people say, what if God is faithful?
[00:18:12] What would happen? What would happen if God really comes through with his promise? Because we still doubt him. We shouldn't, but we still do.
[00:18:21] I still wonder whether it's gonna actually become a reality. Right.
[00:18:25] But what if we started doubting less and had more faith to believe that God is gonna come through? I love the fact that we as a church, we're in the middle of a big what if journey right now. It's cool.
[00:18:37] It's really, really fun to be in the middle of this. We're talking about it as an eldership. We pray every week. We meet every Thursday morning and we pray. We pray for you. We pray for the church. We pray for what we believe God is asking us to do.
[00:18:52] And there isn't any fear in this journey.
[00:18:55] There's just a sense of God. We're just stepping as you're asking us to.
[00:19:00] And it feels like the boxes are being ticked. And it's like, well, if that's being ticked, we just keep stepping. We'll keep stepping. And if at any stage it's not the thing, then we carry on.
[00:19:13] We want to walk in obedience. And sometimes obedience doesn't make sense.
[00:19:17] But obedience is a part of that faith journey.
[00:19:20] Let me ask you, has God spoken something over your life?
[00:19:24] Has he confirmed it through his word? As you talk about it with other people, does it resonate in those that are discipling you or walking the journey with you? Does it resonate with them as well?
[00:19:35] Well, Guess what? God wants to bring that promise to fulfillment.
[00:19:41] Faith isn't wishful thinking. It's not me coming up with a plan and an idea and saying, God, would you bless this for me, please?
[00:19:48] It's that deep desire that has been placed in our heart by God.
[00:19:53] Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
[00:19:57] Those desires are already in us.
[00:20:01] God's already put them in us. And so when we're thinking about the desires of our heart, like God's desires that are coming out of us because he knows us and he knows what we're called to do, faith is trusting God. When logic says that's impossible, the Bible says without faith, it's impossible to please God.
[00:20:20] And salvation itself is a work of faith.
[00:20:24] It's not something we do. Everything is in Christ and what Christ has done for us in saving us.
[00:20:32] But the faith journey doesn't stop when you give your life to Jesus because you're going to be asked to take another step of faith. It might be baptism.
[00:20:41] And then from baptism, it might be that baptism in the Holy Spirit. And then walking through trials and challenges and walking day by day in a relationship with God.
[00:20:52] So we need to have a different spirit that sees the future with faith. And lastly, and I close with this as the keys come this morning, a wholehearted commitment perseveres because of the people's fear, an inability to move forward in faith.
[00:21:12] A journey that was meant to take just a few days ends up taking 40 years.
[00:21:18] What did this mean for Caleb? It meant that he now had to walk for another 45 years through the wilderness. Not his own fault.
[00:21:31] Now. That was me. I'm just going to speak for myself. I'll be going home after another day's walk, going round and round and round the mountain again, again and again. I would be complaining to Amy every single night. I didn't even do anything wrong.
[00:21:48] I got to walk with these people.
[00:21:53] Can't they just die already?
[00:21:58] Well, that was the promise. When they're all dead, you get your land.
[00:22:05] Let's just be real.
[00:22:10] He could have got bitter, right?
[00:22:13] Like, he really could have got bitter, held onto that.
[00:22:18] But there was a spirit. There was a different spirit in Caleb.
[00:22:22] He could have given up, but he stayed faithful.
[00:22:25] And circumstances don't determine blessing. It's a heart posture that does the blessing of God's presence.
[00:22:33] The greatest gift we could ever have.
[00:22:36] When you're alone in your bedroom and you say, jesus, I'm all yours. And he says, I know, and I love that.
[00:22:45] And Here I am.
[00:22:48] What a gift his presence is in our lives.
[00:22:53] Blessed doesn't mean easy, but blessed is faithful.
[00:22:59] It was this wholehearted attitude that positioned Caleb to stand in this moment I'm about to read.
[00:23:06] We're not just talking about making it through a wet and wild winter in the UK in 2026.
[00:23:13] I'm talking about 45 year journey.
[00:23:21] Here we go. Joshua 14 and I land it with this verse 7.
[00:23:28] I was 40 years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me back from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I bought him back a report according to my convictions. But my fellow Israelites who went up with me, may the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. So on that day, Moses swore to me, the land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever because you have followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for 45 years since the time he said this to Moses. Well, Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, 85 years years old.
[00:24:15] Come on. If you are 70 years old or older, can you stand to your feet? Come on. 70 years or older. Come on, let's reveal some ages.
[00:24:24] Come on, let's look at some giants in the faith who have walked with Jesus, who've trusted Jesus through the difficult moments, who wanted to quit but didn't quit.
[00:24:37] Come on, stay standing, stay standing. Come on. Here's your promise.
[00:24:41] I'm still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out. I'm just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. When you look around at these prayer warriors, when you look at these men and women that still want to see God's kingdom come here on earth, we celebrate you. We thank God for you. Thank you for loving him. Thank you for being faithful to, to him. We so appreciate you.
[00:25:07] Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourselves heard and then the Anakites were there. Their cities were large and fortified. But the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.
[00:25:20] You may have a seat. Mighty men and women of God, we honor you. We honor you.
[00:25:27] And some of you are married to far younger versions. And so they didn't get to stand. But we honor you alongside them as well.
[00:25:38] Hey, I think that was a. That was an amen, I reckon.
[00:25:42] And in unison too. It was almost like a harmony. That was beautiful.
[00:25:46] The same giants, the same promise.
[00:25:50] The same faith.
[00:25:52] Some of us need to go back and remind ourselves what God promised us.
