 Throughout my life I've increasingly found that reading scripture in public isn't just about feeding our own spirits and minds, but about rehearsing the mighty acts of God for God's glory. So, let's think together about Numbers 14, 21. But first, we're going to need some tea. The Lord said, I do forgive just as you have asked, nevertheless as I live and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. What's going on here is that Moses has sent twelve spies into the land of Israel from the desert where they've been traveling for the last, goodness knows how long, and they have come back with a report. A report which two of them said was a happy report. Yes, God is giving us this land, we can go and take it. But the other ten said no, this is a terrible land. We're scared. It's going to be impossible. The land is full of dangerous people and we just seemed like grasshoppers as they looked at us. And God is cross and Moses is cross. And this is part of the response of God to that message, that bad message from the ten spies who said we can't do this. And why does God say at this point in this passage that all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord? It's looking forward past what God is doing in the Exodus, past even what God is going to do when the people have come into the land and when they have eventually been established in Jerusalem and when God has come to live in the temple in Jerusalem rather than simply in the wilderness tabernacle as he is doing at this moment in the Book of Numbers. The point is this, God is saying not only can I bring you into this land, despite the fact that you think it looks impossible at the moment, but I've got greater purposes. I've got something much larger to do in you, through you, for you than you can possibly imagine. And so he's saying don't think it's a big deal that I can do what I've promised. Trust me because it will go out way beyond what I've promised and you'll see all sorts of new things which will come from that. I think of this frequently when I think of the way in which we get scared or anxious about the things which we think maybe God is calling us to do and maybe it'll be difficult to do this or dangerous to do that or scary to attempt the other. And again and again the word we need to hear is the word which says actually not only can I enable you to do this because this is what I've called you to do and equipped you to do despite what you may imagine, but there are much greater things out beyond. And if you follow me and if you're faithful to me at this moment in this way, then much greater blessings than you can imagine will follow from that. And all these greater blessings come within this remarkable biblical promise of the whole earth being filled with the glory of the Lord. Again and again the Western Christian tradition has forgotten this biblical promise. It's here in Numbers 14, it's there in Isaiah 11, it's there in Habakkuk 2, it's there in Psalm 72, and it's there by implication all over the place that the point of God making this bipartite heaven plus earth creation was not in order to have people living on earth for a while and then kind of graduating and going off to heaven, but rather that God would eventually bring heaven and earth together and that God himself would come in his glory and live in this new combined reality. That is the ultimate biblical promise reaffirmed in the New Testament in passages like the end of Revelation, for instance, and it's when we keep our eyes on this promise about all the earth being filled with the glory of the Lord. And when we see that that was accomplished in principle through Jesus and the Spirit, then whatever the things are which we're called to do at the moment, even if like the 10 spies, we think, oh dear, we're never going to make this. Nevertheless, we can look at the longer term promise and be assured that God will carry us through the immediate tasks that we face. So may God bless you and give you hope and courage and strength to look at the promises that he has made for the longer term and to trust and obey him in the immediate tasks. Amen.