What do you believe when you face the giants of this life? Do you see yourself as a grasshopper when opposition, depression, financial pressure, betrayal, sickness, and relational strife ambush you? Or are you well able to overtake them?
In Numbers is an account of two ways to view the giants and two very different outcomes.
Two years after the Israelites were delivered from the hand of the Egyptians, they reached an area called Kadesh-Barnea.1 God told Moses to send out twelve spies from there to check out the Promised Land. When the twelve spies returned after forty days of investigation, they brought a sample of giant grapes from the land strung on a long pole. The grapes were so magnificent in size that it took two men to carry them! The Promised Land was glorious! However, when they came back, ten of the spies were the bearers of bad news and two (Caleb and Joshua) brought good news and rejoiced over what they had seen. How could they have brought back such contrasting reports? It’s not because of what they saw with their natural eyes. It’s because of what they believed in their heart: some saw with eyes of fear and some saw with eyes of faith based on whether they trusted God enough to believe that He had given them the land.
Caleb declared:
“Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” (Numbers 13:30)2
The naysayers whined,
“‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.’ And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, ‘The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we SAW the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers IN OUR OWN SIGHT, and SO WE WERE IN THEIR SIGHT.’” (Numbers 13:31-33)
Ten spies FIRST saw themselves as grasshoppers, and THEN they appeared as grasshoppers to the giants! Actually, the giants were all terrified of the children of Israel because they had heard how the God of Israel had opened up the Red Sea and delivered His people.3
Joshua and Caleb saw the giants for what they were:
“The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, ‘a land which flows with milk and honey.’ Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for THEY ARE OUR BREAD; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. DO NOT FEAR THEM.” (Numbers 14:7-9)
How did Joshua and Caleb perceive the giants? As bread! And not only that, God had removed the protection of the giants so that all the Israelites had to do was go in and take the land. God was on their side! Joshua and Caleb said, “Do not fear them,” but unfortunately, here was Israel’s response:
“And all the congregation said to stone them [Joshua and Caleb] with stones.” (Numbers 14:10)
Two years before, God had delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians to bring them into the Promised Land, and it was not His desire nor His plan for it to take forty years for them to reach it. It was because of their lack of trust and their rebellion that they wandered for forty years.
“According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know My rejection.” (Numbers 14:34)
A trip that should have taken eleven days,4 took forty years because they would not do one simple thing: trust God by taking the land by faith in His promise. If God says something, there is enough power in those words to make it happen!
Because of their unbelief, every man of fighting age would die in the desert, except for Joshua and Caleb.5 About two and a half million people had come through the Red Sea (six hundred thousand men, not including woman and children6), but because they did not trust the Lord, only TWO men out of all of the men who had crossed the Red Sea actually entered the Promised Land. The Promised Land that God had told them to enter into and take was already theirs! Yet they chose to believe what their natural eyes told them: that they were grasshoppers compared to the might and strength of their enemies. A whole new generation joined Joshua and Caleb as they crossed over the River Jordan to possess the land, but because of unbelief, they left a whole generation of corpses in the desert.
What does this mean for us today? What do you see? Are you a grasshopper in your own sight? Or are your enemies bread for you? Are you facing giants? Or is your God all powerful? Will the enemies of fear, depression, sickness, financial ruin, and relational difficulty overtake you? Or are you well able to overtake them through the power of the Holy Spirit within you?
(from pages 333-335 of Unveiling Jesus)
Want more from Tricia Gunn? Check out excerpts from the Unveiling Jesus 20-part series!
Unveiling Jesus, by Tricia Gunn, is a verse by verse study of the pure gospel of grace. It’s an amazing journey of love, identity, and freedom in Christ.
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1Deuteronomy 2:14 – “And the time we took to come from Kadesh Barnea until we crossed over the Valley of the Zered was thirty-eight years, until all the generation of the men of war was consumed from the midst of the camp, just as the Lord had sworn to them.” After the spies were sent out, it took thirty-eight years for all of the men twenty and over to die in the desert.
2All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version. Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission.
3Joshua 2:10
4Deuteronomy 1:2
5Numbers 14:29-30
6Exodus 12:27
