Sermon Tone Analysis

/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.”

/

/So at the LORD’s command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran.

All of them were leaders of the Israelites.

These are their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur; from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori; from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh; from the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph; from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun; from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu; from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi; from the tribe of Manasseh (a tribe of Joseph), Gaddi son of Susi; from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli; from the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael; from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi; from the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Maki./

/These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land.

(Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Joshua.) /

/When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, “Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country.

See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many.

What kind of land do they live in?

Is it good or bad?

What kind of towns do they live in?

Are they unwalled or fortified?

How is the soil?

Is it fertile or poor?

Are there trees on it or not?

Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.”

(It was the season for the first ripe grapes.)

/

/So they went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob, toward Lebo Hamath.

They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, lived.

(Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)

When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes.

Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs.

That place was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut off there.

At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.

/

/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 you 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, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”

/

/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.”

/

/But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those 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 are of great size.

We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim).

We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”/

\\ Giants (*vv.

27-29*) — We tend to overstate the opposition to our advance.

We who are of the Faith of Christ Jesus the Lord of Glory have received a marvellous promise of victory.

/I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it/ [*Matthew 16:18*].

According to the Saviours’ own word, not Hades, not even death itself, can overcome Christ’s work.

The *New Living Translation* interprets this final victorious statement as /all the powers of hell will not conquer it/.[1]

That seems to be an accurate sense of Jesus’ words.

Despite this glorious promise of victory the vast majority of churches, at least in Western Canada, seem to live in defeat.

The powers of hell appear to be slowing our advance.

I would not make such a statement to be deliberately provocative, but I suggest that the evidence does support this contention.

We Baptists look to baptisms as an indicator of evangelistic success.

We accept that an individual who is baptised has confessed Christ.

Thus we are reasonably confident that those reported as baptised have confessed Christ and been born into the Family of God.

We do not count those who make professions and yet hesitate to be baptised though we know that faith in Christ is the sole criterion for salvation.

Therefore, the number of baptisms in a given period of time should be a valid indicator of how we view the advance of the church.

Within the Alberta Area of the Baptist Union of Western Canada during the last reporting period covering1997~/98 our churches reported 4.5 baptisms per church.

That means that it took twenty-six members to bring about one baptism.[2]

This was better than the average for the denomination as a whole.

Bear in mind, however, that nineteen of our fifty-nine churches in Alberta reported no baptisms during the entire reporting period.[3]

During that same reporting period we lost a net total of five churches throughout Western Canada.

Membership advanced in the four western provinces by only 225 during that same period.[4]

When all the calculations are complete there was a growth of membership within our churches of barely one-percent throughout all of Western Canada.

We are not even keeping pace with the growth of population.

We are not even holding our own.

If the advance of the Faith depended upon our churches, we would be forced to concede that it is only a matter of time until there is no viable witness left.

Tragically, our experience is not so terribly different from most other denominations in Western Canada.

The evangelical churches are certainly in better shape than the old-line denominations, but we have nothing to brag about.

We do not believe the promise of Christ and as a consequence we are in decline relative to the growth of our population.

I cite this lack of evangelistic growth neither to embarrass anyone nor to castigate the evangelical churches that serve in Canada.

I do, however, suggest that as we listen to the people within those same churches we will hear some fascinating excuses for our lack of progress.

I hear many of those same excuses for failure within this church.

No doubt those who are guests and friends from other churches either hear or voice similar excuses.

We are told that people don’t want to hear the message of life.

We are told that young people are not interested in that message.

We are told that the cults have muddied the waters so much that people are suspicious of us.

In effect the excuses are that the people living in our land /are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large/.

In effect we hear that there are giants in the land; /we can’t attack those people, they are stronger than we are/.

There have always been giants in the land—reasons why the churches cannot advance.

The descendants of Anak are not always nine feet tall, though they are giants nevertheless.

Seeing such opposition to the work God has called us to, we quiver and quake at the thought of confronting these giants.

What we fail to realise is that the enemy has always used the roar of giants to terrify the saints.

Peter cautions Christians about the methods of the enemy in *1 Peter 5:8*.

/Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour/.

The roar of the lion is intended to paralyse the prey with fear so that they cannot react.

We cannot be /self-controlled and alert/ if we are terrified.

We cannot /resist/ the foe, /standing firm in the faith/, if we are looking for a way of escape.

The lion’s roar is but to terrify and dismay.

Should we listen to the roar of giants we cannot hear the voice of God.

Perhaps we need to cease taking counsel with our fears and listen to the voice of God.

As you read the account of David confronting Goliath you will first read a pitiful description of the armies of Israel.

The army of Israel had experienced a glorious string of unbroken successes in confronting the enemies of God under Saul’s leadership.

Nahash the Ammonite had been defeated and the city of Jabesh Gilead delivered from defeat [*1 Samuel 11:1-11*].

Jonathan had attacked the Philistine outpost at Geba, defeating it [*1 Samuel 13:23-14:14*].

Again God had worked through Jonathan to rout the Philistines [*1 Samuel 14:15-23*].

Once more God gave Israel victory and they defeated the Amalekites [*1 Samuel 15:1-7*].

There had been continuous success against the enemies of the Lord, but this time when the Philistines opposed Israel they had a giant with them.

One giant can stop the mightiest army.

Goliath defied the army of Israel and challenged the army to send just one man to fight him.

*1 Samuel 17:11* is a pitiful verse.

/On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified/.

Everyone was frightened!