Numbers 13:30-31
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.”
Introduction
I read a quote this week from Saddleback Church’s founding pastor Rick Warren that said “We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.” Sparky Anderson, a two time World Series winning manager said “People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present. I’ve got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There’s no future in it.” These are such good quotes and help us to frame our fourth wall that Satan builds between us and God.
There is a song that Waylon Jennings wrote when he first made it in Nashville called “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” In the song, he asks the question that makes up the title of the song a few times. Each time he asks it, he refers to the fact that country music hadn’t truly changed, except for the shiny suits and news cars. Or the fact that people think that once you got a recording contract that you had ‘made’ it in Nashville. He finally realizes that the way that he truly can ‘make it’ in music was to do his own thing and not live in the past. You know, we do that a lot, in our churches, in our denomination, in our own lives. We look back and see how good things have been (or at least how good we think it’s been). We think, “well, if we could just do this again” or “if we did that one more time, we’d make sure to get this many people through the door”.
Well, the past is a tricky thing. We have to realize that there’s two things about the past that are incontrovertible. The first is that there is nothing we can do to change it. We can redefine it, we can interpret it differently, but there is absolutely nothing we can do to actually change what has happened. The second thing is that there we can learn from it to do things better. Now, I know you didn’t come for a history lesson today, and I don’t want to slip into that. But I can tell you that those two things are what we are here for today. We can’t change our past, but Satan will try to use that against you. We can also learn from our past, but Satan will try to use that against us as well, making sure that we do make the same mistakes over and over. I want us to take a little time today to look at these two things.
There’s Nothing We Can Do to Change the Past
When I say that there is nothing we can do about our past, it is truly that. Since science has not invented a way to time travel, unless it’s in the movies, we cannot change what has already happened. We can’t truly take back a word that we’ve said in anger or disappointment that we might regret later. We can make amends for that, but it is going to be there for all time! One of the most despicable ways that Satan uses the past against us is this: he will have people come to you and point out your mistakes as proof for why the Gospel doesn’t exist or why it wouldn’t work for them. Let me give you an example: when I was talking one time with a person about faith in Christ, they pointed out that there were people who went to war in Jesus’ name and slaughtered thousands of Muslims in the Holy Land. They asked me “how can a loving God let people go and do that in the place that Jesus himself walked?!” My response was this. I said to them that even though they claimed it was in Jesus’ name, the people were still ruled by man. Because these people are men, and because they are born into a world of sin and have that sin nature, they will fall into that sinfulness over and over again. Is it awful? Absolutely. Is it wrong that they did that? Yes. But we have to remember that Jesus Christ is not the one who went and did those atrocities, and truthfully, the geopolitical means by which those Crusades happened likely would have happened if the religious aspect of it had not been present.
You see how Satan uses the past to prevent people from coming to Christ?! Something completely unrelated to the here and now is used by people from our Christian heritage to prevent them from coming to faith. But let’s put it on a personal level. We have all failed Christ, to a person in this room. Romans 3:23 reminds us of this that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. We will all fall short, sometimes in spectacular ways. You may have a sin in your past that you have asked for forgiveness from the Lord for, and it has been forgiven. But someone will use that against you to try to prove your witness wrong. Or they will use it to try to beat you down. Or use it to try to belittle you. Remember that if you have been restored by God and by your fellow Christians for any sin, that you are a BIG person! It takes much strength and courage to admit mistakes and to ask forgiveness than to belittle others for their mistakes.
And that is what it was like for the Israelites. They had realized that their past held nothing for them but slavery and death. They had come to the Promised Land, and they had sent the spies in. And as we just read, the people were afraid. Was it something in their past that held them back? Was it the thought of having been slaves that kept them from having full confidence in what God had said to them? In the first verses of chapter 14, we know from one of our earlier sermons that the people began to murmur against Moses and Aaron, even saying that they wanted to go back to Egypt to slavery! This is how Satan will use the past against us too; he will make the past seem like it was so great, even when it wasn’t. But we’ll see how things change when Joshua becomes their leader in a moment.
How We Can Learn From It
As I said, there are two things about the past we can know, and the second is that we can truly learn from it. Y’all know that I was a history major originally. The entirety of studying history is to try to understand it and to learn from it. Even to this day, that skill has helped me to make sure that I don’t make the same mistakes in my personal life that I have in the past! But Satan will use the past against us and prevent us from learning from it. How do you think he does it? Well, here’s at least one thought. This week I went down to the Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s meeting to welcome new pastors in Georgia. One of the things that we discussed was, without using these terms, how the Georgia Baptist Mission Board had to and still has to change to survive. The days of $50+ million budgets are already gone, and they anticipate that the giving to the Cooperative Program, which is where our funds that we send to the Southern Baptist Convention goes to and is shared back to Georgia 60% of what we give, is going to go way down within the next few years. In conjunction with this, back when the Mission Board was called the Georgia Baptist Convention, there was a great deal of lack of oversight, a great deal of puffery and bloat, and a great deal of disdain for churches like ours, frankly. They were not interested in churches that were trying to do work in small communities like Suches, but rather huge churches that gave huge amounts to the Convention. Well, this has changed, and it was because they realized, much like the Israelites did when Joshua took over, that if they clung desperately to the past, they were going to be destroyed. I don’t know if it will continue to work in the right way for our state, but the fact that they are wanting to come to even churches like ours to see us and work with us is a seismic change in our state convention. It is realigning with the vision that Jesus had in his Earthly ministry to GO to the people rather than for them to come to Him. Did Jesus have people come to him? Absolutely. But Jesus did not set up at one place and expect everyone to come to him, much like the Pharisees and Sadducees did.
The point of it is this: Satan will use our past glories and our past successes to keep us in one place and not moving forward. Our successes in the past are great, and we can truly hang our hats on them. They are there to provide us with a story to tell others, and to encourage us. But when we take that and make it into an idol, make it into something that we cannot move past, we are stopping that forward momentum. God provides us with knowledge of the past so that we can use it for our future! Look what Paul writes in Philippians 3:13-14. He says “Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are being and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Paul had a great deal in his past that he could both be ashamed of and to celebrate! He could have pointed towards the fact that he would have likely been the high priest had Jesus not intervened in his life. He could have even pointed towards the fact that Christ intervened in his life as the ultimate point and not moved past it. But instead, he says that he has forgotten those things which are behind. Why? Because they are not moving him towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus!
Look at what happens with God’s people with Joshua. In chapter 3 of Joshua, it tells us that the Ark of the Covenant went ahead of the people to the Jordan River. Even though it was at flood stage around the harvest time, the water parted when the priest’s feet touched the bank of the river. The priests stopped in the middle of the river, and all of Israel passed by on dry ground. This is important to note because look at how the people had reacted under Moses’ leadership. They had been hesitant to move. They didn’t want to go across and even pined for their past life in Egypt. But God had moved in a mighty way here! Because the people were not lacking in faith, because they were not troubled by the thought of new leadership and had stuck to their mission, and because they were unified now, they realized that God was leading them towards a great a glorious future! They knew what the past held, they understood it, and they had learned from it. And they even left a memorial to God to remind themselves of this lesson. At the end of chapter 4, verses 19-24, it says “On the tenth day of the first month the people went up from the Jordan and camped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho. And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.” The lesson was that even though the past is there, and we might have a reminder of it, our past can be something that we look back on to ensure that we are truly moving forward, being strong and courageous in the LORD to be able to do so.
Conclusion
Our past can be a hindrance to our faith if we let it. Or we can learn from it and not let Satan use it for his devices to keep us from God. I read a story this week that reminded me of this. A man lived in a neighborhood, and one of his neighbor’s kids kicked a football that broke a small basement window. His family was hanging on by a thread financially, so the man boarded up the window, saying that he would get to it someday. The frame was rusted shut, and he couldn’t fix it. Over the years, he would get an estimate from a window company, and every time they would recommend putting in energy-efficient windows for the whole house. One contractor let the man know that because the window’s frame was embedded into the foundation, that whoever did it would have to chisel out the window by hand. It would have been expensive, and there were six windows like that total in the basement. In the meantime, the boarded up window didn’t let light in, but it let bugs in and heating and cooling out.
That window ate at the man. Every time he went into a hardware store, it would nag at his mind. He knew he had to address it, but he had built up the process (and the price) so much in his mind that he was paralyzed. Then the man’s wife had a job change, and they had to move. He knew that the potential buyer wouldn’t have the house pass inspection for a loan unless the window was fixed. He pulled off the boards off the window to face it head on. It had been many years since he had looked at it. He thought, well, I might at least try to see what I can do with it before I get a contactor out here to tell me how much it’ll cost. He grabbed some WD-40, sprayed around the rusted frame, and gave it a tug. To the man’s astonishment, the frame moved and the window opened! For the first time in decades, the window had opened. He was able to remove the window frame, took it to the local glass store, and got a piece of glass for $12.
12 bucks, some WD-40 and some elbow grease! That’s all it took. But the man had let that window haunt him for years, shutting out light and letting in bugs. And he finally had fixed it for someone else when the house was empty. It didn’t need to be the most efficient, it just needed to be a window!
Now, we know that this story truly isn’t about a window really. For us, our past is filled with “broken windows”. It could be something that happened to you, something you’ve dealt with all your life. It could be like my family where we had to struggle so much to get pregnant, or even waiting on the Lord for a church to call me into ministry! They can be things that hold us back if we let them. But if you let Satan use those broken windows to keep the light from shining into your life, then your past truly can hold you back. Remember this, though; don’t blame yourself for dwelling on the past if you find yourself doing that. Turn it around! Reflect upon the greatness of God in your life in the past, and look at how he has taught you. Remember that there are times where there are broken windows in your past that you can’t fix by yourself. Know that Satan will try to isolate you using that, but that you have Christian friends and professional people who can help you get past that! Find the right help to fix your broken windows. And remember that your broken windows of the past could be the story that will help someone else come to find Christ. But you have to make that first step of going to Jesus. Just start by starting. And God will remind you that you have a great future ahead of yourself. Let’s pray.
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