May 4th 2025 // Numbers 13-14
APPLICATION: Read & watch/listen to Numbers 13-14
Question #1:
Who are you going to be known as?
What are you going to stand for?
Question #3:
What will your life look like when you look back on it?
Decisions
In the movie On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando played a promising boxer who bowed to Mob pressure and intentionally lost an important bout in return for a small payoff. Years later he was still wracked by the effect that loss had on his life, cutting short his boxing career. Now instead of being a sports superstar he was just another dock laborer, condemned to a dead-end job. His whole existence was summed up in one immortal line, “I could have been a contender.” Having lost his opportunity through one bad decision, could he ever recover it? His once-hopeful life seemed destined for emptiness.
Perhaps that is where we find ourselves. We may be wrestling with a decision that still has to be made, the consequences of which will be lasting. Or maybe we must decide whether or not to resist the pressures that the forces of evil are exerting on us; it has yet to be determined whether or not we will be a contender. Or we may be struggling with the ongoing effects of a bad decision we made many years ago, the fruit of which is still very much in evidence in our lives. In our case the question is rather, what hope is there for failed contenders? The answers to these questions are addressed in the narrative of Israel’s wanderings in Numbers 13, 14. When the end of their journey seemed to be in sight, the Israelites snatched defeat from the jaws of victory through their unbelief, going from contenders to dead-enders without a blow being struck.[1]
Digging Deeper:
A. Why the Difference?
How could these two groups come up with such different assessments of the same facts? The answer is not hard to find. The majority completely left God out of the equation. They described the land they toured as “the land to which you [Moses] sent us” (13:27), not “the land the Lord is giving us” (compare 13:2). They saw the size and number of the inhabitants of its cities and concluded, very reasonably according to their presuppositions, that invading that land was impossible. With such adversaries and with their own limited resources, they felt they had no chance of being a contender. Like the Israelites who centuries later faced another giant foe, Goliath, they looked at the odds stacked against them and saw a task that was too great for ordinary humans to tackle. They forgot the Lord, and so they feared their enemies.
Joshua and Caleb, however, looked at precisely the same facts but from the perspective of faith, not unbelief. Joshua’s very name expressed his faith in the Lord. His name at birth was Hoshea, “salvation,” but Moses gave him the name Yehoshua or Joshua, “the Lord saves”—a small shift, yet a crucial one (13:16). It is one thing to have faith in salvation. That may simply represent the generic hope expressed in a thousand Hollywood movies that if you only believe strongly enough, something will turn up at the crucial moment. It may simply be faith in faith, belief in the power of believing. The name Yehoshua, however, expressed the specific hope that at the crucial moment someone would turn up. Joshua had faith in the saving presence of the Lord, Israel’s God.
That specific faith in the Lord’s presence and favor with his people was what drove Joshua and Caleb’s interpretation of the facts in front of them. They saw the same warriors as the majority did, protected by the same city walls, and yet concluded that those pagan nations not only could be but must be defeated. Like David facing Goliath, they saw their opponents according to a true scale. The difference between the majority and the minority reports was simply that the minority included God in their calculation. David saw Goliath not as a giant to be tackled by a small and ill-equipped shepherd boy but as a wild animal who had reared up against the sovereign Lord and would inevitably face the deadly consequences. So too Joshua and Caleb saw the inhabitants of Canaan merely as mighty obstacles that God would inevitably overcome so his purposes could be fulfilled. The Lord who had parted the Red Sea in front of his people would not abandon them now. Giants may seem enormous from the perspective of the shrimps, but comparing them with the power of the Almighty tends to cut them down to size. If you fear the Lord, you will be free from the fear of your enemies; if you forget God, you will inevitably fear men.[2]
B. The Irrationality of Unbelief
Unfortunately, the response of the people of Israel was not faith in the Lord but grumbling and rebellion. Instead of being motivated to obey, they sought to stone Joshua and Caleb for their words of faith (14:10). They believed the assessment of the majority report and grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said,
They were even ready to elect a new leader and go back to Egypt, reversing the whole course of the exodus. This entailed a complete rejection of the Lord and of Moses, a rejection of the salvation the Lord had promised them and the mediator he had chosen to lead them.
Notice, though, how fundamentally irrational their unbelief was. The majority report was logically flawed. Contradicting the good report about the nature of the land that the scouts gave Moses at first, the majority spread a bad report among the people, saying that the land devoured those living in it (13:32). Yet in the very next breath they went on to describe its inhabitants as giants! Think about that for a moment. How could a barren land produce such fearsomely well-nourished inhabitants? It doesn’t add up. Nor does the complaint of the people make any more sense. How could it be better for them to have died in Egypt or in the wilderness than to face death at the hands of the Anakim? Is certain death sooner preferable to possible death later? Does it make sense to believe that the Lord poured out earth-shattering plagues on Egypt, parted the Red Sea in front of his people, and then fed them miraculously with manna in the wilderness only to have them fall at the hands of the inhabitants of the Promised Land? Does God do one dramatic series of miracles in the lives of his people only to fail at the last hurdle, leaving them tantalizingly short of what he promised? That doesn’t make sense.
Isn’t our unbelief equally irrational though? We believe and proclaim that our God created the universe out of nothing; yet we find it hard to believe that the results of a particular medical test belong to him. We believe and proclaim that our God directs the courses of kings and nations and that he has transformed our own dead hearts into living, responsive flesh; yet we find it hard to believe that he can bring our stubborn friends and neighbors to faith in himself. We believe and proclaim that our God entered history as a baby in Bethlehem; yet we find it hard to believe that he is active in our own personal history, holding our hand through the events of this week and the next. We believe and proclaim that he suffered on the cross for our sins and rose again triumphant from the grave to free us from our sins; yet we find it hard to believe that this particular sin of ours could ever be forgiven or that the power of that sinful habit could ever be broken. Our unbelief is always fundamentally irrational, a sinful refusal to fear God, which results equally inevitably in a sinful fear of people and circumstances. It is as irrational for us to cling to our unbelief as it is for a drowning man to cling to a heavy stone.[3]
Questions to Consider:
Prayer Time:
[1] Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 167–168.
[2] Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 170.
[3] Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 171–172.
Question #1:
Who are you going to be known as?
- Response of Fear
- Response of Faith
- Response of the Familiar
What are you going to stand for?
- Truth and facts of God’s word
- Promises of God
Question #3:
What will your life look like when you look back on it?
- Those without faith will perish
Life Application:
Decisions
In the movie On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando played a promising boxer who bowed to Mob pressure and intentionally lost an important bout in return for a small payoff. Years later he was still wracked by the effect that loss had on his life, cutting short his boxing career. Now instead of being a sports superstar he was just another dock laborer, condemned to a dead-end job. His whole existence was summed up in one immortal line, “I could have been a contender.” Having lost his opportunity through one bad decision, could he ever recover it? His once-hopeful life seemed destined for emptiness.
Perhaps that is where we find ourselves. We may be wrestling with a decision that still has to be made, the consequences of which will be lasting. Or maybe we must decide whether or not to resist the pressures that the forces of evil are exerting on us; it has yet to be determined whether or not we will be a contender. Or we may be struggling with the ongoing effects of a bad decision we made many years ago, the fruit of which is still very much in evidence in our lives. In our case the question is rather, what hope is there for failed contenders? The answers to these questions are addressed in the narrative of Israel’s wanderings in Numbers 13, 14. When the end of their journey seemed to be in sight, the Israelites snatched defeat from the jaws of victory through their unbelief, going from contenders to dead-enders without a blow being struck.[1]
Digging Deeper:
A. Why the Difference?
How could these two groups come up with such different assessments of the same facts? The answer is not hard to find. The majority completely left God out of the equation. They described the land they toured as “the land to which you [Moses] sent us” (13:27), not “the land the Lord is giving us” (compare 13:2). They saw the size and number of the inhabitants of its cities and concluded, very reasonably according to their presuppositions, that invading that land was impossible. With such adversaries and with their own limited resources, they felt they had no chance of being a contender. Like the Israelites who centuries later faced another giant foe, Goliath, they looked at the odds stacked against them and saw a task that was too great for ordinary humans to tackle. They forgot the Lord, and so they feared their enemies.
Joshua and Caleb, however, looked at precisely the same facts but from the perspective of faith, not unbelief. Joshua’s very name expressed his faith in the Lord. His name at birth was Hoshea, “salvation,” but Moses gave him the name Yehoshua or Joshua, “the Lord saves”—a small shift, yet a crucial one (13:16). It is one thing to have faith in salvation. That may simply represent the generic hope expressed in a thousand Hollywood movies that if you only believe strongly enough, something will turn up at the crucial moment. It may simply be faith in faith, belief in the power of believing. The name Yehoshua, however, expressed the specific hope that at the crucial moment someone would turn up. Joshua had faith in the saving presence of the Lord, Israel’s God.
That specific faith in the Lord’s presence and favor with his people was what drove Joshua and Caleb’s interpretation of the facts in front of them. They saw the same warriors as the majority did, protected by the same city walls, and yet concluded that those pagan nations not only could be but must be defeated. Like David facing Goliath, they saw their opponents according to a true scale. The difference between the majority and the minority reports was simply that the minority included God in their calculation. David saw Goliath not as a giant to be tackled by a small and ill-equipped shepherd boy but as a wild animal who had reared up against the sovereign Lord and would inevitably face the deadly consequences. So too Joshua and Caleb saw the inhabitants of Canaan merely as mighty obstacles that God would inevitably overcome so his purposes could be fulfilled. The Lord who had parted the Red Sea in front of his people would not abandon them now. Giants may seem enormous from the perspective of the shrimps, but comparing them with the power of the Almighty tends to cut them down to size. If you fear the Lord, you will be free from the fear of your enemies; if you forget God, you will inevitably fear men.[2]
B. The Irrationality of Unbelief
Unfortunately, the response of the people of Israel was not faith in the Lord but grumbling and rebellion. Instead of being motivated to obey, they sought to stone Joshua and Caleb for their words of faith (14:10). They believed the assessment of the majority report and grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said,
Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? (14:2, 3)
Notice, though, how fundamentally irrational their unbelief was. The majority report was logically flawed. Contradicting the good report about the nature of the land that the scouts gave Moses at first, the majority spread a bad report among the people, saying that the land devoured those living in it (13:32). Yet in the very next breath they went on to describe its inhabitants as giants! Think about that for a moment. How could a barren land produce such fearsomely well-nourished inhabitants? It doesn’t add up. Nor does the complaint of the people make any more sense. How could it be better for them to have died in Egypt or in the wilderness than to face death at the hands of the Anakim? Is certain death sooner preferable to possible death later? Does it make sense to believe that the Lord poured out earth-shattering plagues on Egypt, parted the Red Sea in front of his people, and then fed them miraculously with manna in the wilderness only to have them fall at the hands of the inhabitants of the Promised Land? Does God do one dramatic series of miracles in the lives of his people only to fail at the last hurdle, leaving them tantalizingly short of what he promised? That doesn’t make sense.
Isn’t our unbelief equally irrational though? We believe and proclaim that our God created the universe out of nothing; yet we find it hard to believe that the results of a particular medical test belong to him. We believe and proclaim that our God directs the courses of kings and nations and that he has transformed our own dead hearts into living, responsive flesh; yet we find it hard to believe that he can bring our stubborn friends and neighbors to faith in himself. We believe and proclaim that our God entered history as a baby in Bethlehem; yet we find it hard to believe that he is active in our own personal history, holding our hand through the events of this week and the next. We believe and proclaim that he suffered on the cross for our sins and rose again triumphant from the grave to free us from our sins; yet we find it hard to believe that this particular sin of ours could ever be forgiven or that the power of that sinful habit could ever be broken. Our unbelief is always fundamentally irrational, a sinful refusal to fear God, which results equally inevitably in a sinful fear of people and circumstances. It is as irrational for us to cling to our unbelief as it is for a drowning man to cling to a heavy stone.[3]
Questions to Consider:
- How does Numbers 13 illustrate the contrast between faith and fear?
- Why do you think ten of the spies focused more on the difficulties rather than the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey?
- In what ways does the reaction of the Israelites to the spies' report reflect human tendencies when faced with intimidating situations?
- How do Caleb and Joshua demonstrate a different perspective? What can we learn from them?
- How does this chapter relate to the larger narrative of the Israelites' journey to the Promised Land?
- How does the episode in Numbers 13 inform your understanding of obedience and disobedience?
- How does leadership play a role in Numbers 13, and what lessons can you draw from it?
- In what ways might you be allowing fear to overshadow faith in your life, much like the ten spies?
Prayer Time:
[1] Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 167–168.
[2] Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 170.
[3] Iain M. Duguid and R. Kent Hughes, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 171–172.