Religion & Spirituality
The Insidious Enemy Within May 30,2021In the process of surviving 400 plus years of brutal slavery an enemy had secreted itself in the psyche of a nation for whom God had amazing plans. Like a traitor hidden within the ranks, it lay in waiting to further sabotage its host!When the nation ultimately known as the Israelites became so miserable that they could no longer bear the tyranny of their oppressors, their cry was heard in Heaven. God, selected Moses to go on an “impossible” mission bearing a message that would be understandably seen as ludicrous, to the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. In spite of heavy resistance on the part of the Egyptians and surprisingly, many of the Israelites as well, God extracted His chosen nation from their masters in a miraculous show of power! This once great nation was impoverished and decimated in their fight against God’s unfolding deliverance of what was probably over 2,000,000 people!This “exodus” from Egypt, as the aptly named second book of our Bible describes it, was in every respect, a 40-year-long miracle! Nothing of that magnitude had ever occurred on planet Earth before or since!At one point in recent history a former Quartermaster General of the United States Army described the logistics necessary to sustain 3,000,000 people. Although larger than what most scholars believe Israel was at the time this at least gives the staggering scale of provisioning and dynamics to support such a mass movement of people. See if you can get your mind around the Quartermaster’s description of just the necessities:1,500 tons of food daily…(would require two freight trains a mile long)4,000 tons of daily firewood… (several more mile-long freight trains)Water, IN A DESERT…enough to drink and wash a few things (not counting the watering of livestock)…11,000,000 gallons (this would require a freight train with tank cars over a thousand miles long)The overnight Red Sea crossing would require an opening of around 3 miles in width so that as many as 5,000 people abreast could make the passage in that amount of time.Imagine the area required to camp a group approximately the size of Kansas City, San Antonio or Austin!Imagine the scope and logistics of this mass movement of humanity… Do you think that Moses could have had any idea how to handle ANY of these issues?Yet, God supplied their needs, sustaining them in every way for FORTY YEARS! Every day was a miracle, featuring a cloud over them by day and a pillar of fire by night! Even their clothing didn’t wear out! You would think these people would have been convinced in short order to trust God no matter what He asked of them!BUT SUCH WAS NOT THE CASE! Hidden away, deep within their sense of who they were, was a slave mentality etched into their very soul! Before long, the sad truth became evident… IT IS FAR EASIER TO GET THE SLAVE OUT OF EGYPT, THAN IT IS TO GET EGYPT OUT OF THE SLAVE!Regardless of His faithfulness and assurances that …” He had brought them out that He might bring them in to the land of their inheritance.” (Deuteronomy 6:23) The enemy within actually succeeded in nullifying God’s standing promise for all but two individuals out of the entire generation! The leaders of the twelve tribes even scouted out the land as the Lord had escorted them to a point near its border. They admitted that it was everything He had promised… BUT… there were giants, and that they saw themselves as grasshoppers before the inhabitants of the land! God said they were CONQUERERS, but the enemy within spoke with a familiar voice and reminded them that they were not! Two men refused the familiar plea to be reasonable and opt for the safety of the familiar hopeless existence they had grown so used to. Somehow, these two men had taken God’s promises to heart. They silenced the enemy within and were now being driven by the same conviction a later prophet would declare in Proverbs 28:1: “The wicked flee when no one pursues,But the righteous are bold as a lion.”Hebrews 4:2 commenting on this period after the miraculous exit from Egypt, points out why the failure to live out God’s promise befell all but these two men: “…the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.”The horrifying result of this deeply imbedded belief system caused this entire generation of ex-slaves God had rescued, to needlessly die outside their God-given destiny! I Corinthians 10 powerfully points out the fact that this whole event is to be seen as completely relevant to our own journey after salvation.For time’s sake let’s look at the 11th verse, but a careful reading of at least the first 13 verses could actually be critical to entering our own inheritance!“Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our own admonition (instruction) upon whom the ends of the ages have come.”In closing, I would like to spend a few minutes focusing on a very relevant “take away” from the mention of these ancient enemies of God’s people that affects you and me today! It is actually highly likely that like ancient Israel, we ourselves have been “counseled” by the voice of the enemy within, to play it safe, to comply, to draw back, to avoid confronting the “giants” standing between us and God’s desire for our lives! Seven tribes occupied Israel’s promised land. God repeatedly promised that He would drive them out in partnership with Israel. The process would occur…” little by little” so the land would not become wild again before they could properly settle it. This probably had something to do with their ability to grow competent in managing the land they obtained. In addition, it most likely would have helped them avoid falling prey to arrogance which would have been a likely to result from a constant string of easy victories.Apparently, the literal meanings of the names of these tribes are said to come from commentary on their characteristics and behaviors.These tribes are listed in Deuteronomy 7:1. Afterward the Lord gives terse instructions as to how they need to be dealt with and great encouragement in a powerful pronouncement all the way through chapter 9. Remember, all of this is relevant to us and meant to be instructive to us as pointed out earlier!Tribe #1 Hittites…This tribe trafficked in terror and fear, broke enemies down through violence and confusion. Many other words are associated like, “panicked, dismayed, broken and beaten down”.Tribe #2 Girgashites…” to stir up trouble”Tribe #3 Amorites… “prominence, mountain dwellers, to challenge with words, murmurer, talker, a slayer”Tribe #4 Canaanites…” merchant, trafficker, peddler, bring low, bring into subjection, trappers, to humiliate in a manner that leads to depression”Tribe #5 Perizzites… “inhabitants of unwalled villages, squatters, illegal occupants” …Original meaning:” lack of commitment”Tribe #6 Hivites…” Serpents, compromise, encampment, life-giving, tent village” Tribe #7 Jebusites… “trample underfoot, loathe, tread down, subjugation, ruin, downfall, to be polluted, heaviness, discouragement” Remember, it was among these tribes where the spies saw the giants. All these tribes were formidable, aggressively warlike and well entrenched in their homelands for many years. Their wickedness had reached a threshold at which the Lord wanted their influence destroyed and replaced by His people.We should all realize that like those ancient Israelites, much of our inheritance is being guarded by just such entities. They don’t appear before us on horseback, looking fierce, powerful and bearing weapons of war, but they are there nonetheless! We should consider the possibility that we are unknowingly listening to an enemy hidden within that is being triggered by familiar feelings and fears! We are most likely to find our hidden enemies amidst painful experiences from our past. Most of us have developed coping mechanisms to deal with emotional injuries, rejection, unreasonable fears, disappointment, failures, insecurities etc. Most of these involve avoiding risk-taking and may inadvertently cause us to shrink back from the victories the Lord wants to grant us? I want to suggest that the solution God utilized to get Israel to act in faith and take on those tribes, giants and all, may be the same one He is calling us to. It involved the death of an entire generation of voices nurtured in slavery! The Apostle Paul declared: “I die daily” I Corinthians 15:31The discipline inherent to a “walk of faith”, literally demands putting the “flesh” to death, this essentially involves closing our ears to the voice of enemy within telling us not to engage the enemy, to shrink away and just survive! Two statements come to mind, that I would like to leave you with today. The first was something my dad said virtually every time I was ready to give up on something or quit because something was too hard. He would say:“Can’t never did anything…try did it all!”The second memorable reminder is very much like it:Faith is spelled…RISK!IT’S HIGHLY UNLIKELY THAT THE INSIDIOUS ENEMY WITHIN WILL EVER WHISPER SUCH THOUGHTS TO YOU WHEN YOUR INHERITANCE IS ON THE LINE! So, in the words of a little song we sang in Sunday school growing up: “Be careful little ears what you hear” Here’s what I’m hearing: …” the people who know their God will be strong and carry out great exploits!” Daniel 11:32