The Grasshopper Complex

Introduction

I can relate to being small. I can remember being an alternate, my sophomore year being an alternate on the West Point High School math team. This will probably come as a surprise to you, as if me being on the math team wasn’t surprise enough. That West Point High School was known statewide for its math team. We had won state championships and would that year win another state championship in the state of Alabama in a math team. And I was an alternate that year, and it just so happened at one competition that I was called upon to step out of the alternate role and actually be a participant in the math competition. And when I was placed at the table along with my teammates, and I could see the competition.

But they looked mighty nerdy.

Sitting there in my overalls and flannel shirt, and across were all of these genius looking kids.

And all of my math skills left. I couldn’t add, much less, subtract, multiply, and divide. I did horrible that day. Because I was so intimidated by what I viewed as the much smarter math kids across from me. If memory serves right, I was the biggest guy in the room, taller than many of the teachers and judges that were there. But in that moment I felt like the smallest guy in the room. Because I wasn’t up to the task that these other people were.

Will you turn with me in your Bibles to a time in Numbers chapter 13 to a time in which God’s people felt that way? Numbers chapter 13, we find a period in Israel’s history where they are on the precipice of the promised land. Moses, really God, through Moses, has delivered them from their burdensome slavery and bondage in Egypt. Now, remember how God has done that. Through those ten powerful demonstrations of his power against not just Pharaoh, but against the false gods of Egypt. God, ten times through those plagues demonstrated his absolute dominating power to. To be trumped only by the demonstration of his power in parting the Red Sea and then unparting that Red Sea to destroy the pursuers of the Egyptian army. Those 11 events, 10 plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, should have been forever indelibly marked in the minds of the children of Israel.

And two marks should have been upon their mind. Number one is our God is so powerful.

There is nothing out of his reach, ability, or power. The second thing, close to it, that should have been in their minds is that God will not hesitate to use that power on our behalf to bring about his promises to Abraham in this generation. But they got intimidated. God has brought them in about a two-year journey to the precipice of the promised land. And you remember the story. Moses says for each tribe to choose a spy. We’re going to send 12 spies to go and to spy out the land. And they’re going to come back and they’re going to give us a report about this land that God has promised to give us the God who did those ten plagues against the most powerful nation on earth, the Egyptian people.

The same God who has promised to deliver us into this Canaan land is the same God who parted that Red Sea and destroyed the most powerful army on the presence of the earth today, the Egyptian army. But you go and you spy out that land. You remember the report. In fact, let’s pick up in the reading there. Are you in Numbers chapter 13? It says that they went and they spied out that land and they came back. Look at verse 27. Pick up in the reading. The 12 spies have gone, they’ve come back, and here’s their report. They told him and said, We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. It flows with milk and honey.

Now, to understand that phrase, we need to go back a little bit. Milk and honey requires cows and bees, and cows and bees need grass and flowers. And so this is a land that is lush. This is not the arid desert, dry land that we have been traversing through the wilderness. This is a land that is full of green grass and beautiful flowers that cows and bees thrive in, and they give us milk and honey. It truly flows with milk and honey. Verse 28, nevertheless, nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong. The cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south. The Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea along the banks of the Jordan.

Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it. But the men who have gone up with him said, We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we. And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land, which they had spied out, saying, The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants. And all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. Verse 33, we saw the giants. The descendants of Anak came from the giants. And we we were like grasshoppers in our own sight. And so we were in their sight.

Started off positive. It’s just like you said, Moses. It flows with milk and honey. It’s beautiful, it’s opulent. But they began to describe the inhabitants of the land, and how ferocious and how big they were. And the more they talked, the more they psyched themselves out. And their conclusion was we were like grasshoppers in their side. Someone has termed this the grasshopper complex. That’s what I experienced that day in that math tournament. The grasshopper complex. Those other people were so much smarter than I was. That there was no hope. These children of Israel saw the inhabitants of that land, the armies that they had amassed, the size of the people, and said, We’re like grasshoppers in our own side.

1. It Focuses on the Negative

Not just in a math tournament, but how it can even or dangerously affect our spiritual life. Let’s talk about a few things, negative things, very dangerous things that this grasshopper complex can do. One thing that it does is it focuses on the negative. Like I said, they started out positive. Oh, look at this fruit that we’ve brought. Look, it flows with milk and honey. One verse of positive, followed by how many verses of negative. But, but this, but there’s this, but there’s that. This idea of the grasshopper complex causes us to focus only on the negative, and it brushes away and minimizes the positive. The positive should have been, yes, it’s just what you have promised. It’s just what God has promised. This is the land that God has brought us to.

So many times we can do that with life, can’t we? That we can take anything, no matter how positive, no matter how wonderful, and we can only see the negative side of it. And that’s a sad way to go through life. And it’s a dangerous way to go through our Christian life. Only seeing the negative and not seeing the positive. So many Christians do that with their life today. They look at their Christian life and they see the sacrifices that have to be made to be a Christian. They see the temptations that have to be overcome. They even see the increasing persecutions that we might have to endure. And forget about the land flowing with milk and honey. And yes, there’s going to be some obstacles.

Yes, there’s going to be some challenges, but look at the positive. What a difference this story would have been if they had spent one verse saying, you know, there’s some powerful people. There’s some even some giants in that land. But let me spend eight verses telling you about how beautiful this land that God has promised us is. As a child of God, as a person to whom God has promised beautiful and wonderful things, I want to challenge you to not ignore the negatives of life, not to ignore the persecutions and the travails of the Christian life. Jesus calls upon us to count the cost. But to focus on the positive. To focus on the reward that we have in life. Look with me in 1 John chapter 5.

Well, actually, start in 1 John chapter 4. I want to notice a couple of verses in 1 John. 1 John is such a positive letter. It’s a short letter, but it’s so positive. And look at the positivity of it. Let’s start in 1 John 4, verse 4. He says, 1 John 4, verse 4, you are of God, little children, and have overcome them. Because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

And in verse 13. Or excuse me, verse 3. 1 John 5, verse 3. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. Now that verse is a little bit of a head scratcher, isn’t it? Is John saying God hasn’t called upon us to make any sacrifices? God hasn’t called upon us to make any tough decisions. No, no, that’s not what he’s saying. He’s not saying there’s not going to be some difficult choices and some sacrifices to be made. Then what does he mean when he says his commands are not burdensome? It ties back to what John tied it to in both his gospel and this epistle when Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments.

2. It Can Make Us Feel Inadequate

And we focus upon not the negative, what God has called upon me to do and all the thou shalt not and all the persecutions and the hardships, but we focus upon the relationship that we have with God. And we focus upon that promised land and the rewards and the positives. And so I want to challenge us to not be grasshoppers in our own sight, but to focus upon the good, to focus upon the positives in being a child of God, to focus upon the reward in front of us rather than the challenges that are immediately before us. The second thing that the grasshopper complex can do, it did for the children of Israel in this day of darkness, which by the way kept them from getting into the promised land, is that it can make us feel inadequate.

That’s the whole basis of the grasshopper complex. We can’t do it. That’s what they said. Now Caleb said, well, wait a minute. We can do this. No, we can’t. We cannot. We are not up to the task.

It’s a delicate balance that we must strike when we talk about self-esteem. Because I know the Bible tells us in places like Romans chapter 12 and verse 3 that we’re not to think above think about ourselves above that which we truly are. But it’s also true that you’re special. Because God doesn’t make any junk. And then from the very beginning, we are told that we were not simply a part of God’s creation. That would be special enough. But we and we alone were made in the image of God. That God put his stamp upon us. And that we mean something to God. Turn back in your New Testament to the book of Romans, chapter 5. And maybe this is the balance in that proper biblical self-esteem.

Romans chapter 5, start in verse 6. For for when we were still without strength, when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, and yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if when we were his enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

You are special to God.

The children of Israel, because of this grasshopper complex, felt inadequate, and God would not allow them to enter into the land. You know the story. God now puts them into the wilderness to wander around until that older, rebellious, faithless generation passes away, and the next generation is allowed to enter into the land. A couple questions about that next generation, who almost 40 years later would enter into the land. Had the inhabitants of Canaan weakened in those 40 years? Had the giants shrunk? Had the next generation of Israelites gotten taller and bigger and stronger and more military-minded? No. I don’t think either one of those things happened. But yet that next generation was able to conquer the land. They were up to the task. And so the question is not whether or not I am able to do the things that God has challenged me to do and put before me.

3. It Forgets the Factor in God

The question is only, am I willing to accept the challenge? Am I willing to step up and to have the courage and the fortitude to accept the challenge? Jesus’ twelve apostles forever stand as an illustration of this principle. Here were twelve men who, by the world’s standards, in the world’s eyes were completely inadequate for the task that Jesus gave them to do. But by every standard possible, once they finally accepted that challenge, they mastered it wonderfully. And God can do the same thing through and in us. If we’ll just step up and be courageous. But really, here’s the danger, the greatest danger in this grasshopper complex. We can’t do it. They’re too big, they’re too powerful, they’re too mighty, we’re too weak, we’re not properly trained, is that it forgets the factor in God.

That next generation that we talked about, they didn’t really conquer the land, did they? Remember Jericho? They weren’t really big and strong. They weren’t really great military people in conquering Jericho, were they? It was God. And that’s what Joshua and Caleb, too, in fact, the only two of the twelve spies that you can remember their names. That’s what they tried to remind the people of. Wait a minute. Yes, these are big people, but they’re not bigger than our God. It’s the principle, and it’s the exact opposite of this grasshopper principle that David employed when he rushed into that battlefield against the giant Goliath. It’s not that David thought he could defeat a giant, it’s that David knew that his God was bigger than any giant.

Since they had witnessed those ten plagues.

And once on the other side turned around and watched God destroyed not the army of the Hivites and the Amorites, but a far more powerful army in the Egyptians. And if they could have just remembered that, that the same God who brought us out of Egypt will bring us into the promised land. He may employ in more plagues. He might have to miraculously cross the Red Sea or a river before us again. But somehow, some way, God can do this. Don’t ever forget that all that we do is possible in and through God. In the book of Romans, chapter 8, the Apostle Paul, after the darkness of the conclusion of chapter 7 of the struggle of trying to make it through life with sin and temptation and the inevitability of falling in that sin, Paul turns the page in chapter 8 with a list of positives that we have on our side.

And after listing those positives, he comes to this conclusion in Romans chapter 8, verse 31. What shall we say then to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? What if those 10 spies had said that? Oh, it’s a land flowing with milk and honey. Look at the fruit that we brought back. Man, they some giants in that land. They’ve got walled cities, they’re armies, they’re better fighters than we are, they’re bigger people than we are, they’re more prepared for the fight than we are. But if God be for us, who can be against us? How it would have changed their lives. If I utter those words in true faith, if God be for me, who can be against me? Will it change my life in an equally transformative way as it could have changed there?

4. It Creates Spiritual Cowards

When you’re facing the travails of life, the persecutions, the temptations of life. Don’t just look at what you’re facing in comparison to yourself. See God as being on your side. There are giants in the land today. But if God be for us, who can be against us? Lastly, the grasshopper complex creates spiritual power. Nobody likes to be called names. But there’s probably no insult, no name that you could be called that really in the heart of hearts is worse than this one. Power. Coward.

I take you to this verse often, but let’s go there again. Revelation twenty one. And in verse eight, where John through this vision sees those who, in contrast to those who do overcome and inherit the things of God. Notice what he says of those who are thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone. The unbelieving, the abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars. But he started that list with the cowardly. The cowardly. Those who on the day of battle rather than factoring in God and rush forward to the battle. Shrink back. Rather than those who put their trust in God and realize that I am no match against a giant, but with God, I can do all things. The coward will have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

Maybe more than ever in our lifetime, the challenge is thrown before us to no longer be spiritual cowards. To stand up and to be counted on the sight of God, realizing that we know, we know who has the advantage, and we know who is the true giant of all giants, and who will deliver us from all evil and temptation and persecution and travail and whatever inadequacy there might be in my own person and be overcome if I but trust in God.

Conclusion

Recognizing that it’s not within you that the power resides, but it’s within the power, the mercy, the grace, and the love of Jesus Christ and God his Father, that you can be saved. All things are possible with God on your side. Would you come to Him and defeat whatever giants might be in your life today? Because if God is for you, who can be against you? We can help you in any spiritual way this morning. Let it be known right now, as together we stand and sing.