Brown's Daily Word 11-14-07

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord. We are just a week away from celebrating Thanksgiving. The Lord blessed us with a great weekend of celebration, worship, and fellowship this past weekend. Saturday morning was the men's gathering. The fellowship around the breakfast table was sweet. The breakfast buffet prepared by the women was sumptuous. The Lord spoke to us through our speaker, Chris Seavey, from Davis College. The Russians Men's Ensemble from St Petersburg, Russia brought music for our Sunday morning worship services at 8:30, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m. We gathered for our annual church-wide Thanksgiving feast at 12.30 PM. Our cups ran over with much love. The Lord provided for us so much food... all home made turkey, dressing, potatoes, pies and all the works. We shared with the Russians and many international students from the Binghamton University a very traditional American Thanksgiving feast. The Russians Ensemble presented their full concert in the evening. It was powerful and awesome. Love in any language can be fluently spoken because of Jesus Christ, who is the incarnation and embodiment of love and grace. Praise the Lord that we can celebrate His great love, His amazing grace, and His tender mercies.
I have heard it said that you cannot determine a man’s greatness by his wealth and ability, but rather by what it takes to discourage him. Joshua was born as a slave in the land of Egypt and was just a young man when God sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of that land of slavery and into the Promised Land.
The Bible doesn’t say when it happened, but it does say that Joshua was the personal assistant to Moses from the time that he was a young man. Joshua was there when the 10 plagues went throughout Egypt. He was there when God opened up the Red Sea for the Israelites to walk through and he was there when that same sea closed back up on the Egyptian army.
Then comes the battle with the Amalekites. God told Moses the plan and in turn Moses told the Israelites the plan. Moses would stand at the top of a nearby hill with the staff in his hand. As long as Moses held the staff up the Israelites would win, and Joshua would be the man who would lead the Israelite army. Moses held up the staff and Joshua and the Israelites CRUSHED the Amalekites.
Joshua was there when God met the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai. He was there when the mountain was smoking, and the trumpets of God were blaring and all the people watched as Moses called out to God and God answered back in the thunder.
Joshua was there when God called Moses up the mountain, because Joshua went with Moses up that mountain into the very presence of God. And God gave to Moses the plans for the ark of the covenant, and he planned out how the people could worship him. God wrote the 10 commandments on 2 tablets of stone for Moses to take back to the people. When Moses and Joshua were going back down the mountain they heard a lot of noise coming from the camp of the Israelites. Joshua represented the tribe of Ephraim and he took his place amongst the others in what would be one of the biggest tests of his life. Though at the beginning of the journey, I’m sure that it felt more like an opportunity and an adventure than a test. These 12 spies would be the first to see the Promised Land, they would be Israelites eyes, was this truly a land flowing with Milk and Honey?
The spies went up into the land on a 40 day journey and they found a land that had crops bigger than they had ever seen in Egypt. They went just as the first harvest of grapes were ready and they cut down a cluster that was so large that they had to hold it on a pole between two men. THAT’S A BIG CLUSTER!
The grapes weren’t the only big thing that the spies saw though, the land was also filled with giants, and a people who were powerful in cities that were large and well fortified.
Now this journey had transition from an exciting first look to a defining moment in Joshua’s life. Those spies were the eyes of the people of Israel. Their words would either give life, or give death.
The spies returned and gave 2 reports. The first report was from the 10 who were afraid. 10 men who believed that they could not have what God had promised to them. 10 men who believed that the giants were stronger and more powerful than God. These 10 men gave a report that convinced a nation to lose there faith in God. The second report was from Caleb, who I believe was the spokesman for him and Joshua. “Let’s Go, God will surely give us this land.” Don’t look at the Giant, look at God.
But the people of Israel chose to believe the negative, doubt filled, fear mangled report instead. Joshua and Caleb tore their clothes in disbelief and the people of God decided that they would choose a new leader to take them back to Egypt.

Those spies played a vital role in the direction that the Israelites would go. We can see from how they made their decisions and from the 2 different reports that were given that 12 men were looking out of 2 different kinds of eyes.

The first were relying on human eyes. The Israelites always fell into sin when they did what was right in their own eyes. Our eyes can serve as our rational and our reasoning in life. We believe what we see. Some people say, “I have to see it to believe it.”
And God says, If I have promised it, then it is even better than if you had seen it with your own eyes. Because your eyes might deceive you, but I never will.
When we have the faith to see it through, we rely on the supernatural instead of the natural. We rely on Faith on not on sight. Not only did Joshua have to rely on Faith to be his eyes, he also had to rely on Faith to respond to the pressure of the people around him. Maybe we have never thought about the kind of pressure that was on Joshua and Caleb that day. It would have been a really intense situation.

It was 2 men trying to convince a million that they should rely on God. And the people were so upset that they wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb. They were so frustrated that they wanted to kill these 2. That’s pressure. But even the possibility of death was not enough to shake their faith.
It takes faith to make it through pressure in life. There will always be voices telling you that you are on the wrong track.

Joshua and Caleb responded to the voices of the people around them tactfully and in full submission and obedience to God.
Numbers 14:7-9 They said to the community of Israel, "The land we explored is a wonderful land! 8 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! 9 Do not rebel against the LORD, and don’t be afraid of the people of the land. They are only helpless prey to us! They have no protection, but the LORD is with us! Don’t be afraid of them!"
Because Joshua and Caleb took that stand God spared them from the punishment that the rest of their generation went through. God commanded that all of the people in that Generation would die in the desert while there children would enter the promised Land. This was the result of disobedient parents. They relied on their eyes instead of on God. As parents, our faith greatly impacts the lives of our children.

The Israelites who died in the desert put their children through an extra 40 years of waiting and wandering. They wasted the best years of there children’s life because they didn’t have the faith to take the promise that God put before them.

While 40 years passes and Joshua and Caleb are the only people of that generation still alive and so now God will allow the next generation to go into the Promised Land.

They get to the Jordan River and at this point the Promise is not yet in their hands, they can’t taste it, they can’t touch it. At this point they are just believing God. It was the harvest season and the Jordan river was overflowing its banks.

And God says, “Joshua, I am going to establish you as leader today. Command the Priests who carry the ark of the covenant to step into the river. Once they step in I will cut off the flow of water and the people will walk across on dry ground.”

This action that the priest were to do defines faith. They walked into the water while it was still overflowing the banks, they stepped into it before God had done anything, believing that He would do everything he said.

And they stepped into the water and God performed the miracle of the crossing of the Jordan River.

Then God gave another command of Faith to the Israelite army. Walk around Jericho once a day for 6 days and then 7 times on the seventh day. Walk in silence but after you have marched around the city 7 times on the 7th day the priests will sound the rams horn and your will shout with everything that you have got and God will give you the victory.
How many of us know that there was a week a marching in silence before they saw God do anything?
Faith before sight. Faith before understanding. Let faith be the filter for our life, everything that we say and think gets filtered through the word of God and our faith.
When a situation arises let us put it through the filter of faith. When the people all around us point at the Giants we point to God. When the voices that come at us shout compromise we listen to the still small voice of God that is more powerful than anything we have ever experienced.
Hebrews 3:14 . For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ. So let us be encouraged in the Promises of God. Let us encouraged in his goodness and his grace. When his eyes saw the giants , through faith, he, saw the promise. May we see His promises, through Faith in our Lord Jesus, May we claim all His promises, may we seek His continual presence with us.
In Christ,
Brown