Thoughts on Numbers 13

Today’s reading: Numbers 12-13; Hebrews 7

I could be wrong about this, but I think Numbers 13 is a test. I think the entire reason God has Moses send spies into the land, and specifically spies chosen from among the leaders of the people, is to see if Israel will trust Him.

Why do I think that? Compare what Moses tells the spies to report back on with what God told Moses all the way back in Exodus 3 at the burning bush. In Exodus 3 God told Moses that He would take the people up to a good and broad land, flowing with milk and honey, and He tells him whose land it currently is. Then when Moses sends the spies into the land he tasks them with checking out whether the land is good, and what it produces, and who lives there. The only new information Moses asks for is whether the people live in camps or cities, and whether there are trees there. So assuming Moses can trust what God has told him about the land from the outset, this isn’t a fact finding mission, meaning it serves some other purpose, and I think that purpose is to test Israel.

And how does Israel do in the test? Terribly…

What did the spies find when they went into the land? Literally nothing new. They come back and report that the land is good and produces great crops, and then they list all the same people groups occupying the land that God listed in Exodus 3 when He told Moses about it in the first place. Essentially, they came back and said, “It is 100% exactly what Yahweh said it would be,” but then ten of the twelve spies are afraid of the people of the land and instead spread a bad report among the people so they won’t want to go in and try to take possession of it.

Consider, too, who it is God had Moses send into the land. Each of the spies was a “chief among [their tribe].” These weren’t random Israelites, these were leaders of their respective tribal families, which also means they were likely on the mountain with Yahweh Himself. Remember when God told Moses to bring Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel up onto Mount Sinai and they shared a covenant meal with the embodied Yahweh before Moses was called further up the mountain to receive the law? If these men are chiefs among the people, they were likely in that group who have not just seen the works of Yahweh in delivering them from Egypt like everyone else, but who have also sat in His very presence on Mount Sinai!

Who in history has been more primed to trust Yahweh than Israel here in Numbers 13? They have literally just experienced God rescuing them from slavery in Egypt by great signs and wonders, they walked through the parted sea on dry ground, they eat the miraculous food God provides for them each morning, and they are being led by His very presence in visible form as they come up to the border of the promised land. So with all they have experienced, and are actually still experiencing, especially when the land is as good and plentiful as God promised, trusting Him to deal with the people should be a small issue, especially since He already told them He would send hornets ahead of them to drive the people from the land! But they don’t trust Him and instead turn the people away from Him.

As easy as it is to look back and judge them for their lack of trust, I don’t think we are all that different today. Trusting God in theory is a lot easier than trusting Him in reality. It is often simplicity itself to agree with a theoretical step of faith. We know God is good, we know He is powerful, we know He can supply everything needed to follow Him, we know if He is calling for something it is the best thing to do, etc., so yes, if He calls for that step, the only reasonable thing to do is to trust Him! But then when He actually puts that step before us, we freeze, we come up with excuses for why we can’t or shouldn’t, we suddenly question all the things that were so certain when it was theoretical, and then we have a real choice to make, whether we trust God or not.

I was in a spot like this not too long ago. My family is in the middle of pursing an adoption, which is an incredibly expensive process that we do not have the money on hand to complete, but we felt very clearly like God was calling us to pursue it. One day during my lunch break I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the whole thing, not knowing where the money for it would come from, and took a walk to spend some time with God praying about it. As I was praying I heard an audible voice telling me to go ask a certain person I didn't know to pray with me about it, which really weirded me out because this is far from a normal experience for me, and to which I immediately decided I wouldn’t. But it kept bothering me, so I walked over toward the guy, and when I got close, he was sitting there with an open bible in his lap reading! Asking a random person to pray with me about it felt really weird and uncomfortable, but here the guy was reading a bible, there was literally no reason for me not to ask him! But I felt too uncomfortable doing it and I walked away...

I have no idea why God told me to ask him to pray with me about it. Maybe the man has adopted before and had an encouraging story of how God provided the money for his family. Maybe he went to a church that was starting up an adoption grant program that we could have applied for. Maybe the man had just won the lottery and was looking for something worth giving the money away to and would have funded the whole thing. Maybe he is just really faithful in prayer and God wanted to give him the chance to be praying for us throughout the process. Or maybe any of 1000 other things, but I won't ever know, this side of heaven at least, what God might have been trying to do with it because I decided not to trust Him that day.

It is honestly a very humbling case-study for me. As much as the Israelites, standing there on the border of the promised land, had every reason to trust God, I had just as much reason to trust Him that day. An audible instruction about something I am praying about, and then the guy has a bible open in his lap... How much more of a lob do I need God to pitch me??

So while it is very easy to read a story like this in Numbers 13 and judge the Israelites for their faithlessness, assuming that we would have done so much better in their position, there is an important question in here for us as well. We can look back and say that it just seems so obvious, but, day in and day out, with all the 1000 small ways we have before us each day to trust God and go His way rather than our own, are we doing it? When the theoretical becomes the practical and God is calling us, not just to have faith, but to act on it, do we step out on what we know to be true, or do we, along with the Israelites, look at the task before us and decide that maybe our God is not as big as we had thought He was and we pull back from letting Him show us just how good He is for His word?

I want to be the kind of person like Joshua and Caleb are in this story. I want to be the kind of person who sees the reality if the situation, who sees how daunting the task ahead really is, who knows just how much God is going to have to come through if it is going to work, and then boldly steps out in confident faith that our God truly is as good as He says He is.