To Trust or Not To Trust
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Numbers 13
Numbers 13
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.” So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran, according to the command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the people of Israel.
Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and said to them, “Go up into the Negeb and go up into the hill country, and see what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds, and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be of good courage and bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes.
At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.”
But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
The Israelites finally make it to the edge of the promised land. Notice how God phrases it in verse 2, the land that I am giving you. The promised land is a gift that God is giving them. The only problem is that when they went to spy out the land not only was it plentiful but it also had some strong people and heavily fortified cities. This is no problem though right? They know what God can do so if he gave it to them then they can just go right in and take it. This is true but most of them didn’t trust God in it. Almost all of the spies started exaggerating about what they saw because they did not believe that they could take the land. They lacked faith.
The outcome of this is that God doesn’t allow them to take the land until everyone but the ones that knew they could take the land had died. Because of their lack of faith they never got to enter the promised land.
In our own lives we are sometimes just like the majority of the spies, we forget all that God has done and loose our trust in him in whatever situation that we are in. Let this be a reminder to you to always trust in Gods plan because it is perfect and he will come through.
In salvation we are called to have faith. Faith that through Jesus and Jesus alone we can be forgiven of our sins and saved from God’s wrath. Though like the Israelites we fail time and time again he will keep on forgiving us. Repentance is what it is called when you turn from sin and back to God and in our salvation we are called to live lives of constant repentance. Through Israel we get a picture of the gospel message and see that we are just like them. We may look at them and say that I can’t believe they did that again but we are the same way with our sins. We also see through their story that God never gives up on them, he may discipline them when they need it, but he never gives up on them.
Next week we are going to look at a story a few chapters away about a talking donkey.