Distance Devotions – April 21, 2020
Number 13:33 – In Our Own Sight
Numbers 13:32 And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. 33 And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Fear is a paralyzing force. People have frozen at a crucial moment out of fear and paid for it with their life. Fear drives people to do almost superhuman feats. From Wikipedia:
· In 2012, in Glen Allen, Virginia, 22-year-old Lauren Kornacki rescued her father, Alec Kornacki, after the jack used to prop up his BMW slipped, pinning him under it. Lauren lifted the car, then performed CPR on her father and saved his life.
· In 2012, in Michigan, Austin Smith (age 15) lifted a car to save his grandfather pinned underneath.
Fear can really move people as recorded in God’s Word: By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark.… (Hebrews 11:7) We readily see that fear can cause a paralyzing reaction, a superhuman reaction, or a godly reaction. Fear is not necessarily wrong. Everybody should fear certain things, poisonous serpents, wasps, spiders (my personal worst), and many other like things. Fear is not always the wrong reaction. However, in our text, the fear the Israelites had was wrong.
God had told the Israelites that He was going to give them a land that flowed with milk and honey. After making a rapid journey across the wilderness, Moses and the Jewish nation arrived at the border of Canaan. Choosing twelve men to spy out the land and bring a report, they waited forty days. When the men returned they spoke of the fruit of the land, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it. In fact, a bunch of grapes was so large that it required two men to carry it on a pole placed on their shoulders. There was a problem though: they were going to have to fight. God had already told them that this was the place and this was the time. Was any further admonition needed? Why did the spies fear? The answer: in our own sight. Instead of seeing things as the Lord said they were, the spies spewed out their fear of the giants, the sons of Anak, they saw. Then, astoundingly, they begin to say how bad the land was: The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. (vs. 32) Both of the statements in this verse are false. The land was a good land, not a bad one. Some of the people were giants, not all.
Fear distorts things. It makes things that are small seem huge and insurmountable. The spies were faithless men with the exception of two, Caleb and Joshua. They exhorted the people to believe God and move forward. Israel’s failure to do so cost them forty years in the wilderness and over six hundred thousand deaths. The lesson to be learned is that the Lord never told us our way would be simple and without opposition. No, in fact He told us just the opposite. Today, some of us are standing at the border of an improved spiritual life. We look over into the land and see the fruit and the giants. Are we willing to make the effort required to move forward or are we going to be content with wandering in the wilderness? 12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. 13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin…19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. (Hebrews 3) Don’t let fear of the effort or the outcome keep you from walking further with the Lord than you ever have before.
Pastor F. J. Weems III