Grasshoppers and Giants

In a moment, um, I'm going to be reading out of Numbers chapter 13.

Numbers 13 · chapter mention

So if you have your Bible, you can go there.

If you don't, don't worry about it.

We'll put the verses up on the screen.

But I don't want to just jump in and start reading.

Uh I want to give you some context of what you know what's happening in the story.

Um, we started looking last week at uh the book of Genesis, and we we started with the idea of like when that was written.

So if you look at the nation of Israel, for 430 years, they were in bondage, they were in uh captivity to the Egyptians.

430 years.

That that's a long time.

And in 430 years, what you have is a certain way of living becomes deeply ingrained in your psyche.

And so what we know from the book of Exodus is that while they were there, while the children of Israel were in uh Egyptian captivity, they were brickmakers.

And it says that the Egyptians were really hard taskmasters, they wanted to crush the spirit of the Jewish people, and so they they worked them sun up to sundown, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year for 430 years.

And so when you have that mentality and that's been your life, and then all of a sudden God leads you out of that, you're in desperate need of a reset.

And so that's what the book of Genesis is.

In fact, the first few books of the Bible is that reset.

And the original hearer of these books were the children of Israel at Mount Sinai.

So, okay, 430 years of captivity.

God uses Moses to lead them out, and they come through the Red Sea.

You maybe heard this story.

God parts the Red Sea, they come through the Red Sea, and their enemies are drowned in the Red Sea, and now they're in the wilderness.

Technically, they're free, which means you can go north, south, east, west, you can go anywhere you want, but you're in the wilderness.

And so they're living, you know, in temporary shelters.

They're living in tents essentially.

And it takes them, uh, two, three months to get to Mount Sinai, and it's at Mount Sinai that they are there for a year hitting the reset button.

What does that look like?

Well, Moses goes up Mount Sinai, God gives him, you know, essentially the law, gives him some theology to come down and to present it to them.

Why?

Because in their psyche is really Pharaoh, is king and God.

Pharaoh has really, in many ways, even though they, you know, they have a different tradition around God being Yahweh God, they still, their reality has been that Pharaoh's been the omnipotent one.

It's Pharaoh whose fist they've been under.

It's Pharaoh for 430 years.

They've been in, he's been the powerful one.

And so Yahweh, you know, for them in many ways didn't seem as real as Pharaoh.

So here we are hitting the reset button.

And last week we looked at how the message of Genesis 1, really two big themes come out of that.

One is that when God created human beings, he said, You are very good.

That he made man and woman in his image.

And that was a big message they needed to get because they didn't feel like they were made in the image of God or that God cared about them at all.

It felt like, you know, they were they were just there to make bricks.

The the second uh message was really the message of rest, right?

You we know this, the Sabbath, seventh day they rested.

And and so God's telling them, I want you to take a very specific kind of break where you put your bricks down and for a whole day you don't work.

And not just you don't work with your body, but your mind and your emotions are being reminded that your value is not in how many bricks you can make, but your value is in that God says that you're very good.

What does it do?

It puts you in connection to God, which then gives you a revelation of God, gives you a revelation of yourself, gives you a sense of confidence and identity, which drastically affects your decision making.

Okay, so think about this.

430 years of bondage.

We just got out of Egypt, we go to Mount Sinai, we've been at Mount Sinai a year, we just started taking a break, and now we leave Mount Sinai and we go to the promised land.

The promised land.

And it's in Numbers chapter 13, they're on the doorstep of the promised land, about two years after coming out of Egyptian bondage.

Numbers 13 · chapter mention

All right?

Here's what it says Numbers 13, verse 1.

Numbers 13:1

It says, The Lord said now, now said to Moses, Send out men to explore the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to the Israelites.

That's important.

The land I'm giving to the Israelites.

Send one leader from each of the twelve ancestral tribes.

Skip down to verse 25.

After exploring the land for 40 days, the men returned to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Peran.

They reported to the whole community what they had seen, and they showed them the fruit they had taken from the land, and this was their report to Moses.

We entered the land you sent us to explore.

We entered the promised land, and it was indeed a bountiful country, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Here is the kind of fruit it produces.

But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified.

We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak.

The Amalekites live in Negev, the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites live in the hill country, the Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea along the Jordan River.

But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses.

Let's go at once and take the land, he said.

We can certainly conquer it.

We're up for it.

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.

So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites.

Here's what they said: The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there.

All the people we saw were huge.

We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak.

Next to them, look at this now.

Next to them, we felt like grasshoppers.

And that's what they thought, too.

If you you keep reading the story, what you're gonna find is that you have a group of people who have just started to take a break.

They have just started to get used to not being in Egyptian bondage.

And they're hoping to go to the Promised Land, and that the Promised Land is wide open.

It's just grass.

There's nobody there, there's no fight, there's no battle.

But they get there and they find that the land is everything they thought it would be.

It's flowing with milk and honey, it's fertile, it's fruitful, but it's fortified.

And so you have now a decision to make.

What are we gonna do?

And when you read on in the story, you find ultimately that the people that spread the word, hey, look, yeah, it's good, but absolutely not.

This is not for us.

Those people spread fear throughout the camp, and eventually the people decide not to go.

We're not gonna go fight this fight.

And they think they're taking the easy route, or we'll call it the route of peace.

Because once you go punch a giant in the face, you can't unpunch the giant.

Like once you do it, you provoke the giant, you declare war, you fire a shot over the bow, it's it's on.

And we can't undo this.

And so it makes sense.

You can see how somebody would get to that conclusion.

I can imagine myself trying to think it all the way through, going, well, hold on a second now.

430 years, we were in bondage.

If you go fight the giants in Canaan, only three things I can think of will happen.

One, we win.

Which seems kind of unlikely, frankly.

Because we're not even warriors.

We've never been in a fight.

If they want to have a brickmaking competition, sign us up.

Like, hey, we'll make whoever makes the most bricks gets the land.

That's not what this is.

This is a war.

We've not even been to war.

We wouldn't have even gotten out of Egypt if it wasn't for God drowning our enemies.

So we've never been in a fight.

So we're gonna go fight.

So winning feels unlikely.

The second option I can think of is that you die.

You cease to exist.

Third is we end up slaves again just like we were in Egypt, just now to the Canaanites.

And so I'm just getting used to taking a break.

I'm just getting used to the fact that God thinks I'm very good.

I'm just starting to get my theology to try to undo all of the learning that I that me and my ancestors and everybody learned in Egypt.

I'm trying to get Egypt out of me.

I'm still trying to do that.

And yet here I am at this moment where it's time now for me to go step into a fight to seize the promised land, it feels too early.

Here's the reality is often God will call you to step into something before you feel like you're ready.

I don't feel ready.

And you'll always have an armload of excuses, even some of them quite logical.

You can defend them.

But often, like you'll always have something like that that you can keep with you.

You can always say, I'm still getting over Egypt, or I'm still trying to figure out the Sabbath, or I'm still trying to figure out if I can trust Yahweh.

You'll always have some reason to not take the step.

And often, for some reason, God will call us to step into something that's our promised land.

It's something that He's created for us, He's ordained for us.

This isn't just a self-indulgent message that God says, well, you can have whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want.

No, this is a specific thing from God to you, given to you for you to step into, but somebody's in there.

There's some obstacle in the way.

And so you have to decide when it comes to your life, do I want to take the risks associated with obedience and faith and the fight with the giants, or do I want to take what I think is peace or an easier path that skip ahead, spoiler alert, turns into 40 years of being lost.

Let's look at this story because I think there's some things in there if we think about, like I think we can all relate to like Egypt and the Promised Land.

Like you're sitting in the middle of a decision and you've got Egypt, which represents something God's brought you out of.

That's not for me.

I know rationally I shouldn't be there.

I shouldn't be doing that.

That's not my best.

That's not good.

But doggone it if something's pulling me that way.

We we see actually this group of people, these leaders that came and basically told everyone, hey, I know the land's fruital, but no way.

The people are too big, we can't do this.

We we understand their mindset because um we we have some context.

Uh, I want to show you a couple scriptures.

So this is when they were leaving uh Egypt, so before they'd even crossed the Red Sea, okay, uh Moses had said, Hey, follow me, I'm bringing you out of bondage.

Let's go.

We're gonna get to a better place.

Look what they say in Exodus 14, 12.

They said, Didn't we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt?

They they they were um, you know, the the Egyptians were bearing down on them.

He said, We said, Leave us alone.

Let us be slaves to the Egyptians.

It's better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness.

So this group of people, even when Moses was leading them out and they were on their way out, you would think that everybody would be excited to get to this promised land.

And yet you had a group of people saying to Moses, they were fighting Moses even when he was leading them out of bondage.

They were saying, Leave us alone.

We would rather be slaves to the Egyptians.

Think about that.

That's all, you know, the devil you know.

And there's something crazy about there's something uh complicated about Egypt.

I know I'm not supposed to be there, I know that's not God's best for me.

I know, in fact, even I see a pathway out.

Moses is leading me out, and God has shown himself that he's in this.

But there's something about Egypt that I go, uh, but it's comfortable, uh, but it's familiar.

I have a strange attachment to it.

And we know that even after they come through the Red Sea, and even after they're at the doorstep of the promised land, and they decide not to go, in Numbers 14, they say this.

This is why is the Lord taking us to this country only to have us die in battle?

Our wives and our little ones will be carried off as plunder.

Wouldn't it be better for us to return to Egypt?

Then they plotted among themselves, let's choose a new leader and go back to Egypt.

So these people, these spies that go into the land and they see the fruit of the land, and they see that it's all that God cracked it up to be, and they see the opportunity in front of them, but they see the opponent, these same people that are still thinking, maybe we ought to just go back.

Maybe we ought to just go back into bondage.

Maybe we ought to go back to where we used to be and who we used to be, and to go back, go back to this, because to go forward into the unfamiliar, into something I've a place I've never been, into a person I've never been.

Even with that promise in front of them, that group of people is trying to pull, they were trying to pull them back.

And this is why actually we'll see that it took a generation of people who refused to have a renewed mind.

A generation literally had to die before they could get the nation to say, you know what?

I'm tired of living in tents.

I'm tired of living in the wilderness.

I'm tired of seeing the land, not being able to take, I'm tired of telling stories.

I'm tired of that, I'm tired of this, I'm ready to go in.

You know what?

Bring on the giants.

Because the mindset was I'd be better off in Egypt.

And I think all of us find ourselves suspended between where we used to be, who we used to be, even though things we know we shouldn't be in, shouldn't be doing, it's pulling us this way because it's familiar.

It's not my best life, it's not really where I know I'm supposed to go.

I know it here, but there's something about Egypt that has a pull on me.

And yeah, I stand on the doorstep of something I'm unfamiliar with.

I've heard stories about the promised land, I've heard about Abraham, I've heard about what God promised him.

And yet here I am.

And frankly, if I'm looking in the mirror, what I see is 430 years of being under the fist.

This is why they use the language.

We're like grasshoppers.

Think about that.

These guys come back.

I want to just read it again.

Let's let's let's look back at this language.

It says, um it says, we can't go up against them, they're stronger than we are.

By the way, fear, fear often causes us to exaggerate or to distort.

Because when I'm when I'm afraid of something, I I ex I exaggerate it.

It looks bigger to me.

I mean, look in the language.

First of all, they say, we can't go up against them.

You can say you don't want to go up against them.

The next statement's true, they're stronger than we are.

Maybe they are.

But we can't go up against them.

You're exaggerating your options.

We can't.

Yeah, you can.

But they're stronger than we are.

Then look what they say here.

They say, we traveled through and explored uh the land, and the land will devour anyone who goes to live there.

So they start to make the land this like being that will just swallow you up.

They try to make other people afraid of the land.

The land will devour you.

And then look at this.

They say, all the people there were huge.

Really?

Nobody was small.

There wasn't one short person in the whole place.

Everybody's big.

All the people we saw were huge.

There was no babies, no toddlers, right?

Nobody, like every no, all everybody's huge.

Now look at this.

We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak.

If you know what that is, it's it's referring to Genesis 6, which talks about the Nephilim, which would have been stories they would have heard of half human, half angels.

It's like angels and humans had babies and made these Marvel comic characters that are superhuman.

These were the comic books they would have read as kids, okay, about the Nephilim and the descendants of Anak, and they are superhuman.

They can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

They're bigger than we are.

They're superhuman.

What are they doing?

They're inflaming the fears of people who for 430 years have been in captivity.

They're just starting to get the idea that my life isn't about all about bricks.

That God thinks something about me much different than what Pharaoh did.

They're just starting to get their rest.

They're just starting to get their confidence in God.

They're starting to get a consistent revelation of God.

And they go, oh no, no, no, no.

These people, they're not just strong.

They're not just big.

They're superhuman.

And then what they do next is they say, uh, they're they're like the descendants of Anak.

Next to them, look at this.

Next to them, we felt like grasshoppers.

And that's what they thought, too.

I asked the team to get me a grasshopper, and apparently you can't buy one at the pet store.

And so somebody somewhere, I don't know how and where, don't ask me and don't report me, but we got a dead grasshopper with one leg.

All right, this is a one-legged grasshopper, okay?

I don't know.

I have no idea.

Okay, I I I don't and they try to tell me I didn't want to hear it.

Okay, I need plausible deniability.

But what I do know is no grasshopper was harmed in the making of this sermon.

It was harmed way before I ever showed up on the scene.

You know, we did an autopsy, it was natural causes, old age.

Um, but now now think about this now.

All jokes aside, they're standing on the doorstep of the promised land, what God intended for them.

And they're in a very real place of fear because they're still getting their own footing around their identity and what God thinks about them.

And what they do is they make the obstacles in front of them superhuman and they make themselves subhuman.

They are Marvel comic characters, superheroes.

My obstacle is Superman.

And I am not only just subhuman, I'm a grasshopper.

I am easily crushed, totally expendable, with no value.

And they spread that message around a group of people, frankly, that felt like grasshoppers because for 430 years they had been treated that way.

And so they go in and they begin to spread that message.

And here's what I'm gonna tell you.

And this is what we're still liable to now.

Their biggest issue was not the giants in the land, it was the grasshoppers in their mind.

Oddly enough, there the issue for them was what they believed about themselves versus what God believed about them.

And this, you gotta kind of sit with this because it's possible that what you believe about you might be even more important to your life than what God believes about you.

Can I say that?

Is that true?

Look at the text.

God told them, I'm giving you the land.

You are capable.

He told them, You're not grasshoppers.

You are not worthless, you are not your bricks, you are not subject.

To the Egyptians.

He brought them out of Egypt.

And yet, he brought them all the way to the doorstep.

He would have delivered the fight into their hands.

And yet they saw a grasshopper.

It's quite possible that the grasshopper in the mirror is a bigger problem than the giant in the land.

And so it began to spread, and their fears were inflamed.

And so they did what they thought was choosing the easier path.

The easier path, which is we will retreat and not strike the giant.

I want to give you a few things to just think about.

I want to tee up a conversation with you and God and give you a few points and one question.

Here are the three points.

The first is this don't let fear cause you to exaggerate.

Don't let fear cause you to exaggerate.

Your opponents are not superhuman.

The obstacles in front of you are not insurmountable.

But when fear takes over, fear starts to distort and exaggerate.

You start to exaggerate how big they are.

You start to exaggerate how small you are.

They're giants, I'm a grasshopper.

And you start living by fear.

And fear makes you think you're helpless.

And fear makes you think you're hopeless.

And fear makes you think you're friendless.

And fear makes you think you'll never recover and you'll never bounce back, and I'll never love again.

And this is the end of the world.

And fear makes you think you have no shot.

Fear exaggerates.

And so don't let fear to cause you to exaggerate them, exaggerate how small you are, how big they are, and distort your lens.

Paul says in the book of Romans, he says, we are the slave to the one we obey.

And he uses that slave language around sin.

He's like, you know, if you allow your flesh to be inflamed, okay, it will cause a bondage in your life, and then you will obey that thing.

Fear is the same thing.

Fear, what they ended up doing was making a God of fear.

And so with the God of fear, they started just obeying their fears.

I'm not saying don't count the cost.

I'm not saying don't scout the land.

I'm just saying don't call somebody a superhuman when they're just a human.

They're just a little bigger than you.

We just need to come up with a plan.

We got to figure this out.

Is this the land God's given us?

Is this what God's put in front of us to do?

And if we've wrestled that to the ground and we've we're clear.

No, I really do believe this is what God has us to do, then we're not going to allow the mindset the Egyptians gave us or the grasshopper in the mirror to keep us on our heels and to go hide in the wilderness, be lost for 40 years.

So don't let fear cause you to exaggerate and distort.

The second is this recognize the source of the self-defeating thoughts.

Recognize the source of the self-defeating thoughts.

Where were they coming from?

You know, they were coming from a group of people who wanted to go back to Egypt.

This is why I do think, I think one of the big takeaways from this story that you know Moses wanted us to take from this story, whatever day you live in, is to really look and to ask yourself, like, what voices am I listening to?

Because we all have something in our head, okay, that's like this own pull we have to Egypt, our own familiarity to Egypt.

But when you're around people that just want to keep going back to Egypt, they start to impact and influence you instead of having the faith to step into the promised land, even though I'm scared to death.

This is probably why David says in Psalm 34, oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

We can either sit around and talk about how much we're grasshoppers, or we can sit around and talk about how great God is and who God says we are and what we're about to do about it.

And so let us exalt his name.

Let's magnify the Lord together.

You and me, let's feed off each other.

Let's feed off each other about who God says we are.

Let's feed off each other that we're more than just brickmakers.

Let's feed off each other that this is what God's given us to do, and we're gonna take it.

And I'd rather die at the hands of a giant than live in the wilderness wandering around in fear.

That we will not be slaves to fear, that we're gonna step out in faith.

We're gonna trust God and we're gonna move forward, and I'll take whatever risks are associated with acts of obedience and faith.

So you gotta recognize the self-defeating thought.

Some of you, some of it's in your own head, but some of it is in the people around you that keep talking about what a grasshopper they are, because that's what they keep seeing when they look in the mirror.

That's what they keep seeing about themselves, and that's what they see about you.

No, no, notice what it says about in the text.

I I love this.

It says, We we saw that there were giants there.

This is verse 33.

Okay, so if you guys are pulling it up there, uh Numbers 13, 33.

We even saw giants there.

The Nephilim, the descendants of Anak, the superhumans.

Next to them, we felt like grasshoppers.

And look at this, and that's what they thought too.

That's what they thought too.

Well, I guess how did you know how do you know that?

How do you know that?

We're we're the were the we're were the giants looking at you going, how'd you get so small?

Or were they looking at you some kind of way, and then you're like, well, they probably think I'm small.

Because maybe they did.

Maybe they did fire their mouth off.

Maybe they did make some sort of derogatory comment about that you look like a grasshopper or whatever.

Okay, maybe they did, or maybe they didn't.

It's just the fact that I think I'm a grasshopper and they looked at me crazy, so I figure I see that's must be confirmation of what I already think about myself.

At the end of the day, whether they said it or didn't say it, I'm not gonna let the Egyptians what they put on me.

I'm not gonna let what the giants said about me or how they looked at me determine who I am.

How am I going to set the tone for my mind?

Sabbath.

Taking time to connect with God, to program my mind and my thinking, to be renewed around who God says that I am.

Because there's always going to be some Egyptian effect.

There's always going to be some giant calling you small.

There's always going to be some baggage pulling you this way, to have a consistent ritual and routine around coming to God daily, weekly, consistently, because I have to have the right voice win the argument.

And so you have to identify what is that self-defeating voice, and you you you we've got to come back to the word of God.

The third thing is this is the easy way out is not what you think it is.

The easy way out is not what you think it is.

By not fighting the giant, they thought they were taking the easier path.

They probably thought they were choosing peace.

Instead of going to war, instead of going to battle, we're gonna choose peace.

Well, if you read from Numbers 13 to Joshua 6, which is where they finally inhabit the land, after a bunch of people who kept couldn't get over Egypt, kept, they finally had to die, and now you have this group of people that's finally like, I'm not living in tents anymore.

Bring on the giants.

I'm gonna trust God.

We're gonna walk around these walls, and we're gonna trust God, and if if we die, try and then we do.

But you have what you have is 40 years of lostness, 40 years of confusion.

They think that they're avoiding pain by avoiding the giants in the land, but what do they have?

They end up having hardship for 40 years.

Go take the land now.

Caleb says, let's go now.

Let's go now.

If they go now, what happens?

They take the land now because it's what God told them to do.

But but but if they go in and they have to suffer some kind of consequence, okay, they're they're afraid of what could happen, so they go, let's go over here and we'll pick, we'll pick the better option.

And what the what they thought was the better option wasn't what they thought it was.

It was 40 years of toting around a grasshopper mindset, which then led them into all sort of backbiting, infighting.

They ended up having to fight people out in the, you know, out outside of that land.

They ended up fighting with one another.

They ended up with snakes in the camp.

They ended up with plagues, they ended up with 40 years of hardship because they're kicking the pain can down the road because I don't want to go fight the giant because I feel like a grasshopper.

Because why do we even leave Egypt anyway?

God wanted you out of Egypt.

You're not supposed to be in Egypt, you're not supposed to be subject to the Egyptians, you're not, you're not a sun-up to sundown brickmaker all your life.

God has a promised land for you.

He has something else for you.

He's designed it for you.

And yet, because of that, the fear of taking that on, it felt too early, it feels too quick.

I don't feel like I'm ready.

I'm I'm not enough of a warrior.

Because of that, what they thought was the easy path turned out to a very long delayed, delayed 40 years of being lost, 40 years of hardship, 40 years of a grasshopper mentality.

So it gets down to this.

What do we do about this?

Okay, we're all in between Egypt, and think about what is the thing that God's brought you out of that keeps pulling you back.

Doggone it.

I know I'm I know here I'm not supposed to be there, but there's something comforting about it, there's something familiar about it.

It keeps and yet I got this thing in front of me, and I've heard that it's a promised land, and I've heard about the milk and honey, and I've tasted it a little bit, but I've never known anybody that lived in there.

I've never gone there, I've never fully gone there, and it's unfamiliar and it's scary, and we're sitting in the middle of these two things.

If I was you, I'd probably be asking me, well, Greg, how do I know it's the promised land?

Like, how do I know it's what God has for me?

And I wish I could just tell you, I wish I just knew, but like it's as unique as every person in here.

It's the purpose that God has for you, and that's what you have to seek Him on.

I'm not here to give you an answer as much as I'm giving you a conversation for you and God.

Take these concepts of Egypt and the promised land and take all of the grasshopper mentality you're still carrying and the voices that you're listening to and bring those to God.

God, is this what you have for me?

If this is what you have for me, and if you're telling me to go now, of course I have all my reasons why I don't feel like I'm ready.

Of course I have all my reasons why I feel like it's a bad idea.

It it certain logical things don't line up.

There's a lot of things I'm not sure about.

I have uncertainties that I face.

Lord, is this what you have for me?

And if it's what God has for you and you believe that and you've prayed that and you feel like God showed you that, then you step out.

And you say, you know what I'm gonna take?

I'm taking on the giant.

I'm gonna step into this.

I'm not what I'm not gonna do is try to take the easy route and avoid the fight and spend 40 years and 40 years lost.

I'm not gonna spend this time out here trying to figure that, Lord.

I'm gonna put the grasshopper mindset here, I'm gonna believe in who you said I am, I'm gonna believe in who you said you are, and I'm gonna step into this.

And so that's what we have to wrestle to the ground.

I end with this, and I invite you to stand up on your feet.

We're gonna, we're gonna uh go ahead and bring the baptism out here.

I was I was thinking about this uh this morning, you know.

I as we had our first service, I was I was sitting here and I was I just preached this message and I was watching people being baptized.

And I was looking around this room, just sort of taking in the whole scene, and I was thinking back on when I first drove into Columbus.

I'm not from this city, I didn't know anybody here, but my wife and I took time to visit and to pray, and we really sensed that God was leading us here to start this church.

And I remember I resigned my job, we moved here, and I remember driving through downtown Columbus.

And when I drove through downtown Columbus, I remember looking at the buildings and feeling like a grasshopper.

I really did.

I was looking at I'm thinking, like, what am I doing?

I don't know anyone here.

How how am I gonna how are we gonna get enough people where we can find a building?

How are we gonna get like why would anyone come here, some guy they've never met, talk about God?

How do you even start a church?

I've never done this before.

This is uncharted territory, but we had taken time to pray and seek, and my wife and I talked, and we had labored over it, and we had done our due diligence, and we scouted out the land, and we went to different places, and we just couldn't get away from this is what God was asking us to do.

And and I had no certainty around even was I gonna be able to pay, you know, put food in my kids' mouth, exactly how this was gonna go.

I had to work three jobs to do this thing, but it I looked and I was like, it was like, what is God asking me to do?

I really do believe it.

I really do believe God's asking me to do this, and so but there was so much in me that just I felt like a grasshopper.

I felt like I was crazy.

My last Sunday at my old job at the church I was at, they let me preach one last sermon.

They gave us an offering to go and move to Columbus and start a church, and and a guy, an older gentleman, came up to me afterwards and he gave me some stat about how many church plants fail.

He's like, you know, it's only like uh nine out of ten fail.

You know, only one out of ten make it.

I'm like, why are you saying this to me?

Get behind me, Satan.

You know, I was like, I mean, I didn't.

I was like, thank you for that encouragement.

Okay, and then I walked away, and it's like, you know what, man?

You might think you're a grasshopper.

And frankly, you know, if it's just me and the giants, I probably get squashed, but I really believe this is what God's given me to do.

And I've seen God drown my enemies in the Red Sea, and I believe, I believe this is what He's calling me to do, and I'm willing to die at the hands of a giant if I'm wrong.

But I believe this is what God's calling me to do.

And when you wrestle it there, now I refuse to let fear be my master.

And I will walk by faith.

And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

But I'm gonna wrestle it to that point, and I will not live 40 years walking around what might have been.

I'm not gonna walk 40 years, have somebody else living in my land.

I'm gonna walk to where God's called me to go and I'm gonna boldly walk in.

I don't know what this means for you, I don't know what Egypt means for you, I don't know what the promised land means for you, but I'm here to tell you today you're not a one-legged dead grasshopper.

You are not easily crushed.

You might feel weak.

You are not easily crushed.

You are not expendable, you are not lacking value.

We come together every week to focus on God, to glorify his name.

And the revelation that we get of him gives us a revelation of us, how he feels about you.

Make no mistake about it.

He calls you very good.

He's brought you here to do good work for a purpose.

God, what is that purpose?

Don't let what you see in the mirror keep you from fighting the giant.

Amen.