In Numbers 13, Moses sent a group of spies to check out Canaan. Forty days later, they returned. The land is great, they said, but the people are intimidating and the cities are fortified strongholds. They're unreachable. However, Joshua and Caleb added, "The Lord is with us. Do not fear them." (Num 14:9) God brought us here, He gave us the land, He will see to it that we take possession of it.We know how the story goes. The nation listened to the majority report and a generation died without receiving what God had promised. They chose to believe what they saw rather than the God who sent them.
Fast forward hundreds of years. Jesus stood on a mountain and He said to go. Now we go and we scout things out and we report back to Him, "But Lord, the people are intimidating and the cities are unreachable." We don't go any further. We stay and we wander and we die off.
Except for a few.
A few who understand what Jesus meant when He said "All power, all authority has been given to me, and I'm telling you to go."
A few who believe 'the Lord is with us, do not fear them.'
Too often, most times even, I'm one of the "we." Intimidated. Staying. Wandering. But here's the thing. It's not just the generation of believers who will die off. There's a generation of folks who have never heard the name of Jesus except as a swear word. A generation who only knows Christians as silly caricatures or sign-waving protestors. They've never met the life-changing Savior who redeems, who heals, who transforms. And they'll die off, too.
Unless I and the rest of the "we" choose to trust God and His power and His plan more than I and "we" trust what we see.
What are "we" gonna do? Stay or Go?
Romans is one of the cornerstones of the New Testament. In it, Paul lays out the key doctrines of Christianity in a logical progression. It's hardly a dry dissertation, though. Martin Luther touched off the Protestant Reformation when he grasped what Paul had written. The truths even make Paul stop and praise God. (See 11:33-36)
