Because it was an all age service last Sunday we had a shorter reading (Num.13:26-14:9). It was a great reading, but it is in fact part of a longer story (Num.13-14). I’ll leave it to yourdiscretion how much of it you want to tell or read as you build a Family Worship session around the passage. U+you can download a single-side-of-A4 version of this here:
In the great drama of our salvation that is played out on the stage of Gen-Joshua, the Promised land is teaching us all about the New creation. The idea in Chap.13 is that these spiritually responsible leaders (likely from amongst those who had sat with the Lord in Ex.24:9-11) were to bring back a report that would inspire the rest of the Church to pursue God’s vision of their life together. With their redemption fresh in their minds, with the presence of the Lord in their midst, and with the hope of their God-given future before them, they would be unstoppable!
The whole idea of having a secure and well informed hope for our New Creation future is critical to our being able to live as disciples today. This is a fairly straightforward idea to get across to anyone who has sat an exam! Something you know will happen in the future affects how you feel and what you do today. A conscientious student will forego hobbies, social events, TV, Game-play and so on in order to prepare for their future (Exam!). Sometimes people even miss Church when exams are getting close! That might be something you’d want to talk about as a family!!
So, looking forward to the New Creation is very different from looking forward to exams (maybe, planning for a holiday would be a better image to work with!!), but the idea that a future anticipation can affect us and shape us today is a dynamic we can cultivate however old we are. For someone like Paul, his hope for the New Creation helped him when he was facing struggle and persecution (e.g. Rom.8:18). And we can see how dangerous it is when we don’t believe the New Creation is for us.
So – what do we know about the New Creation? What can we learn even from Num.13:23-27?
A great way in might be to read the closing sections of Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan. OK – so the whole of Pilgrim’s Progress is always worth a visit. you can watch a pretty good animation of it on Youtube, here.
Or perhaps ‘My first books...’ sections 212-217. Or for older children/youth, ‘To be a Christian’ Q&A 144-120. If you did get a copy of The-Ology, the Ch.62-65 are pretty amazing ways of getting a really tangible sense of the New Creation hope we have.
Talking about what we are looking forward to about New Creation life is bound to get exciting (if at times prompting some unexpected answers). And spending some time praying that the Holy Spirit would help us know the hope we have is something Paul teaches us to do. Why not re-write Eph.1:17-21 in your own words, and use it as a family prayer? ...perhaps each person could pray for one of the things Paul teaches us to pray about? You could trace around your hand and break the prayer in five, writing each part on a different finger / thumb, and praying them every day this week...
For older children, I’d suggest a second part of the conversation can focus on the mistakes made by the ten spies who are crippled by unbelief. What is the mistake they are making? Why is the Church more inclined to listen to them than to Caleb and Joshua? How can we avoid making the same kind of mistakes ourselves?
Oh – and if it’s your kind of thing, you can get grasshoppers to eat (13:32-33)! How you get that into family devotions, I’ll leave to your imagination!!
