Numbers 13:1-3, 17-20, 25-30 [NLTse]
The Lord now said to Moses, 2 “Send out men to explore the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to the Israelites. Send one leader from each of the twelve ancestral tribes.” 3 So Moses did as the Lord commanded him. He sent out twelve men, all tribal leaders of Israel, from their camp in the wilderness of Paran…
17 Moses gave the men these instructions as he sent them out to explore the land: “Go north through the Negev into the hill country. 18 See what the land is like, and find out whether the people living there are strong or weak, few or many. 19 See what kind of land they live in. Is it good or bad? Do their towns have walls, or are they unprotected like open camps? 20 Is the soil fertile or poor? Are there many trees? Do your best to bring back samples of the crops you see.” (It happened to be the season for harvesting the first ripe grapes.)
…
25 After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned 26 to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land. 27 This was their report to Moses: “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces. 28 But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak! 29 The Amalekites live in the Negev, and the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan Valley.”
30 But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!”
31 But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!”
The famous, so-called “love chapter” of 1 Corinthians 13 ends, saying, “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (v. 13)
In my estimation, we Christians talk quite a lot about faith, and even more about love, but not so much, if at all, about hope. So I’d like to invite us to contemplate together our hope in Christ…
“Faith” and “hope” are sometimes used interchangeably in modern speech, which is unfortunate. Because, where the writer to the Hebrews defines “faith” as “having assurance about things we cannot see” (11:1) – that is, that “faith” is having confidence about things we can’t see, confidence that affects what we say and do here-and-now – “hope”, however, is always future-focused.
Webster’s Dictionary states that “hope” means to cherish a desire with expectation of its fulfillment. And Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Greek Words states that “hope” is a favorable and confident expectation, the happy anticipation of good. So, “hope” is the confident expectation that good is coming. It is an overall optimistic attitude about the future based on the goodness and promises of God. We are called to be people of hope!
In our Scripture Reading twelve spies – one from each of the Twelve Tribes – were sent to reconnoiter the territory God had promised Israel upon their exodus from Egypt. All twelve spies saw the same land, saw the same inhabitants, saw the same fortified cities, saw the same bountiful farmlands, vineyards, and grazing lands. But only two returned calling Israel to invade, conquer, and claim the land: Caleb and Joshua. Why the difference?
The Scriptures make clear the difference was that Caleb and Joshua trusted the Lord’s promise and believed Him when He said the land would be theirs. While the other ten spies were filled with visions of the mighty inhabitants (even some giants, descendants of Anak!) and the massively fortified cities and the strength and power of their armies, Caleb and Joshua were filled with visions of God’s promises: Of Israelites walking up and down the streets of the great cities, and of Israelites tending the vineyards and the fields and the flocks, and of Israelites living in the Negev and in the hill country and along the Mediterranean coast and the Jordan Valley. They were filled with hope, and what they saw – the same things that the other spies saw – was transformed in their hearts and minds by the expections that what God had promised them would indeed come to be!
Paul’s letter To the Ephesians famously describes spiritual armor every lover and follower of Christ needs to always be wearing in order to stand in the face of evil. The head-protection of that armor is called “the Helmet of Salvation”, (6:17) which, in his first letter To the Thessalonians, Paul calls “the Helmet of the Hope of Salvation”. (5:8)
The Roman helmet that Paul is referring to covered the ears as well as the entire head and down over the forehead. That tells me that part of our salvation and the hope of our salvation is our being wise and guarding what we listen to. But then, once we have heard something and it has come into our minds – with the Helmet of the Hope of Salvation firmly in place – we must filter what we do hear through the favorable and confident expectations of the good God has promised us. That is, we hear bad news but we filter it through the hope we have in the good news God’s spoken to us through Christ; we hear about illness and tragedy but we filter it through the hope we have in Christ’s call to us to go and heal and serve those in need; we hear of hopelessness and destruction but we filter it through the hope we have in Christ’s good promises and expectations of new life!
It’s important what we think and how we think about what we think, because – to use the New American Standard Version’s translation of Proverbs 23:7 – “As [a person] thinks within himself, so he is.” Our thoughts, our motives – all that makes up that core driving what we say, how we use our influence, and what we do – that is who we are. And Christ has redeemed all we are to be People of Hope!
Of course, for us Christians, though we have much good and many good promises from God to hope for in this life, ultimately the great good and the greatest promises we have are in Jesus’ return from Heaven to raise all of the dead, grant us imperishable bodies, judge all humanity once and for all, establish a new Heaven and a new Earth free from sin and sinners and death and sorrow and crying and pain, and then to live with us there forever!
So, even with all we have to hope for in this life, ultimately our hope is not in this life at all but in Christ’s sure and certain promises concerning the life He has for us to come! And all of this is our part in wearing the Helmet of the Hope of Salvation and keeping it tightly fastened!
A Christian discipline that can aid and nurture our hope is the practice of meditation. Where contemplation is a practice that has us focus intently on a Scripture passage, thought, or idea – taking it apart, considering it from all angles, etc… – meditation is taking a passage, thought, or idea just as it is and taking it into ourselves with the intention of replacing the lies and deceptions we’ve previously believed with God’s truth. Meditation originally had to do with “mumbling to one’s self”, and when taken together with Romans 10:17 that says, “faith comes through hearing”, we get the picture of the practice of meditation being our preaching to ourselves the Word God’s revealed to us we need to hear.
We human beings need to hear the Word again and again and again to truly believe it and be transformed by it. And the act of meditation helps us soak in a truth so that the lies we’ve believed might be replaced by God’s truth, and so that His truth would indeed set us free!
I’m picturing taking time during my daily devotions to contemplate my circumstances. As I think in a focused way about my circumstances from all sorts of different angles the Holy Spirit directs me to consider, not my circumstances, but how I’ve been thinking about and responding to my circumstances: That is, what I truly believe about what’s going on in my life. And so, although the faith statements and doctrines I might tell others I believe are one thing, I’m helped to realize that my thoughts, words, and actions concerning my circumstances demonstrate that actually I believe something far different. The Spirit of Truth has helped me identify my true beliefs.
So, perhaps I write down those lies and half-truths I’ve believed. But then I research God’s full-truth about these things using Bible helps or, perhaps, by asking a more knowledgeable Christian friend: To know my situation in the light of Christ crucified, raised from the dead, and coming again! And then I begin meditating on those true-truths, seeking to replace the lies my thoughts, words, and actions have shown me I truly believe with the truth of God’s Word; seeking to fill my mind with God’s hope-made-flesh in Jesus Christ.
And so I meditate on God’s Word: “Mumbling” THIS is true; THIS is true; THIS is true; again and again. And then, across the day when I realize I’ve begun thinking, speaking, or acting according to those old lies I’d believed, I “mumble” God’s truth to myself again… My friends, our level of hope shows us whether we are believing lies or truth, because God’s truth produces hope!
In closing, pastor and author Steve Backlund has some helpful things to say about hope. He writes, “Any area of my life that does not glisten with hope is under the influence of a lie, and that area is a stronghold of the devil in my life.” He challenges us that, “My hopelessness about a problem is a bigger problem than the problem.” And he then reminds us, “There are no hopeless circumstances, only hopeless people. Once people get true hope from God, their circumstance cannot stay the same.”
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13)