What’s the Worst that Could Happen?
Fear Not - Part 5
Sunday, March 21, 2021
Numbers 13:17-20, 25-33, Mark 6:30-44, Psalm 121:1-8
But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.”
Numbers 13:30-31
When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?”
Mark 6:35-37
For all of our bold claims about how God is in control, it is interesting how often we make excuses when we are the ones called by God to do the impossible. We encourage and sometimes even expect others to have more faith, to trust God with whatever circumstances they are facing. We remind them that God can do miracles and that God will work everything out for the good. But when it’s our turn to face the impossible it doesn’t matter how many miracles we have seen, we tend to hesitate and imagine all of the things that could go wrong.
This is a familiar story woven throughout scripture. For today, let’s consider just two of those instances. The first comes from the book of Numbers, when God’s people are sent to scout out the Promised Land. The key word here is “promised.” They already had God’s promise that this land was their inheritance. God had already worked countless miracles on their behalf to free them from Egypt and provide for them in the wilderness. Now they are asked to simply give a factual report on what they saw in the land they were about to enter. Instead they returned with an opinion piece about the impossibility of what they were facing. It is a bit like holding an extravagant gift in your hand and bemoaning the fact that you could never afford anything like this, completely ignoring the fact that it is already yours because someone gave it to you. God had given them the land, yet they are afraid to enter. They are afraid they will fail to obtain the gift which has already been given to them. It sounds absurd, and yet this fear of failure constantly holds us back from experiencing God’s promise.
Their fear quite literally paralyzed them and left them wandering in that wilderness for 40 years. This was never God’s intent. They could have entered the promised land. They didn’t have to wait for a generation to die off in the desert. The tragic reality is that they were more afraid of failure when they entered the land than they were afraid of never receiving God’s promise at all, and that’s precisely what happened. Only Joshua and Caleb would dwell in the promised land, along with the next generation of God’s people.
The disciples were also afraid of failure. Jesus was always inviting them to do the impossible and the truth is, they were not always successful. In Matthew 17:19 we find them asking Jesus, “Why couldn’t we cast out the demon?” Yet despite their many setbacks, they continued to press on by faith. When a hungry crowd of over 5,000 people gathered to hear Jesus teach, the disciples were clearly afraid that they could not provide for the need. “Send them into town to get something for themselves to eat,” they told Jesus. When Jesus told them to feed the crowds, they made excuses much like the Israelites in the wilderness. “That’s impossible. The crowd is too big. It would take us more than half a year’s wages to buy that much bread.” The difference between the disciples and the generation who died in the wilderness is that despite their fear of failure, they did what Jesus said. They may have thought it was crazy. They likely expected to run out of food after the first few dozen people at most. But they did what they could, even when what they thought they could do would never be enough. We know the rest of the story. God blessed their faith. The multitudes were fed with more leftovers than anyone could imagine.
I’m not saying God works everything out in the end with the kind of miracle we see in the feeding of the 5,000. There may indeed be times that we fail. There may be times that we feel like failures when perhaps God had something else in mind altogether. Failure is not necessarily a bad thing, but the fear of failure is perhaps the greatest hinderance to success.
We all have a choice to make. We can enter into the land knowing that we may fail but trusting in God’s strength anyway or we can die in the wilderness, never knowing what God could have accomplished in and through us. We can choose to send the crowds away and feed only ourselves with the little we have, or we can give everything no matter how small and watch for a miracle.
God is the miracle worker, but God almost always waits for us to make the first move. If there was no risk of failure, we wouldn’t need a miracle. If the task was not impossible for us, we wouldn’t need God.
What impossible task is God calling you to this week?
What are you afraid of? What would happen if you fail? What would happen if you don’t try at all?
What’s the worst that could happen?
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
Video of the complete worship service available at http://asburyumc-huntersville.com/live