08/04/2008
Numbers 13:1 - 3 (HCSB) 1The LORD spoke to Moses: 2“Send men to scout out the land of Canaan I am giving to the Israelites. Send one man who is a leader among them from each of their ancestral tribes.” 3Moses sent them from the Wilderness of Paran at the LORD’s command. All the men were leaders in Israel.
Numbers 13:26 - 33 (HCSB) 26The men went back to Moses, Aaron, and the entire Israelite community in the Wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. They brought back a report for them and the whole community, and they showed them the fruit of the land. 27They reported to Moses: “We went into the land where you sent us. Indeed it is flowing with milk and honey, and here is some of its fruit. 28However, the people living in the land are strong, and the cities are large and fortified. We also saw the descendants of Anak there. 29The Amalekites are living in the land of the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the Jordan.”
30Then Caleb quieted the people in the presence of Moses and said, “We must go up and take possession of the land because we can certainly conquer it!”
31But the men who had gone up with him responded, “We can’t go up against the people because they are stronger than we are!” 32So they gave a negative report to the Israelites about the land they had scouted: “The land we passed through to explore is one that devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw in it are men of great size. 33We even saw the Nephilim (men of great strength or giants) there.” (The offspring of Anak were descended from the Nephilim.) “To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and we must have seemed the same to them.”
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The Israelites are now south of the Negev, a barren, treacherous desert region south of the Promised Land. Moses receives instructions to send spies into the Promised Land and report back to the people.
In all, 12 spies go. All of them report that the land is fertile and very desirable to inhabit, but 10 declare that conquering the land would be suicidal. Two of them men, Joshua and Caleb, are certain that the land can be taken.
Unfortunately, the people listened to the 10, forgetting one very crucial statement in verse 2: “the land of Canaan I am giving to the Israelites.” God had already promised to give the land to the Israelites.
The 10 spies and the Israelites are just like us. We look at a task that God has set before us and think: “There is no way I can do that.” While this statement is entirely true, we forget that we are to rest upon the strength of the Lord.
Israel had forgotten that God had freed them from Egypt; that He had led them across the Red Sea on dry land; that He had provided manna for them in the dessert and then quail. God had repeatedly provided for Israel yet they now look at this task and shy away because they are not strong enough.
The stories of the Israelites are not in the Bible just to tell us about this group of people many thousand years ago, but to demonstrate to us what God can and will do for those whom He loves. We can see the hand of God in History and we should learn to lean on that hand when we see a task that is insurmountable to us.
It is my conviction that God will place tasks in front of us, occasionally, so that we can learn to trust Him for the answer. These are not necessarily “tests” to see if we are good enough, or if we have enough faith, but rather exercises to help us grow in our dependence on Him. No athlete takes up a sport and achieves the goal in the first try. It takes repeated training and exercise to reach a level of competitive skill. Our faith is exactly the same. We must exercise it with greater and greater obstacles to reach the state that God desires us to have.
Are you looking at a task that seems impossible? Remember that God is able and willing to help you. Will you rely on His strength today?
Jeff Justus
Cleff Publishing
www.cleffpublishing.com
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