In the Wilderness: A Bad Report Card

When Moses sent them to scout out the land of Canaan, he told them, go up this way to the Negev, then go up into the hill country. See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. Is the land they live in good or bad? Are the cities they live in encampments or fortifications? Is the land fertile or unproductive? Are there trees in it? Be courageous. Bring back some fruit from the land. It was the season for the first ripe grapes. So they went up and scouted out the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob near the entrance to Hamath. They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ammon, Shishai, and Taomai, descendants of Anak, were living. Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. When they came to Eshol Valley, they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes, which was carried on a pole by two men. They also took some pomegranates and figs. That place was called Eshel Valley because the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut there. At the end of forty days, they returned from scouting out the land. The 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. They showed them the fruit of the land. They reported to Moses, we went into the land where you sent us. Indeed, it is flowing with milk and honey, and here are some of its fruits. However, the people living in the sea are strong, and the cities are large and fortified. We also saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites are living in the land of the Negev. The Hethites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live by the sea along the Jordan. Then Caleb quieted the people in the presence of Moses and said, let's go up now and take possession of the land because we can certainly conquer it. But the men who had gone up with him responded, we can't attack the people because they are stronger than we. So 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. We even saw the Nephilim there, the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim. To ourselves, we seemed like grasshoppers, and we must have seen the same to them. — Numbers 13:17-33

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

American Fears Then and Now

There's a group called the Chapman Study Group that does sociological studies in the United States and its population and they do these studies on the fears that Americans are dealing with. In 2014, they did this study and ranked the top ten fears Americans were dealing with. Public speaking, bugs, snakes and other animals, heights, drowning, blood and needles, claustrophobia, flying, strangers, zombies, and ghosts.

Now what's fascinating is the same study was done in 2022 and I want you to hear how different this list is. Corrupt government officials, people I love becoming seriously ill, Russia using nuclear weapons, the U.S. becoming involved in another world war, pollution of drinking water, not having enough money for the future, economic or financial collapse, pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes, biological warfare and public speaking.

Is that sobering to you? That's really sobering to me. What it tells us is that we are people who are deeply afraid. There's a lot to be afraid of right now. And those fears have gone from the kind of almost silly to the very concrete for us.

Fear Versus Courage

This passage today is about fear. It's about fear versus one word we saw in the passage—courage. Being courageous. Notice I don't say fear versus faith because for Americans, we use the word faith to mean a whole host of different things from the content of what we believe to trusting God and everything in the middle. So I want to really focus on fear versus courage.

Here's my outline, if you take notes: mistrusting our meaning making, that's number one. Examining our expectations, number two. And flexing our faith, that's number three.

The Context

As we pick up Numbers 13, here's where we are. The people of God have been going through the desert being led by the glory cloud of God. They left Egypt and then they've gone to Mount Sinai where they received the Ten Commandments. That's the book of Exodus. They built the tabernacle and now God has taken them right to the brink. They're right at the brink of the promised land. This land that God has said, I'm going to take you there. That's going to be your home. This is for you. And this is such an important moment.

They're right there on the brink of the land and God tells Moses, go send out 12 spies to go and scout the land. It's kind of funny how this reads: "See what kind of land it is. Is it a good land? Or is it a bad land? Are there any trees there? What are the cities like?" It's kind of a funny list, but in all of this, the people of Israel are given an opportunity to evaluate—not just evaluating the promise, the promised land, but we're gonna see they're evaluating the promissor, God himself.

We call the men that were sent out spies sometimes, but it's really kind of misleading. There's no being undercover in this. There's no exotic situation of not letting anybody know who they are. They're really scouts, and they're going and checking out this land. I like the word "scout" or "spy." This isn't the same as the people who were sent to spy out Jericho, for example, but I like that because this is what we do all the time. We do a lot of scouting and a lot of spying out.

What do I mean by that? We look at our future. We look at our circumstances. We think about what is to come and we do a lot of trying to figure out what the future is gonna be like. Am I gonna have what I need? Is God sufficient for that? What's coming down the pike for us? We do a lot of the same thing. And here's the basic lesson of the passage: the question is, are we gonna be people who look at the future and shrink back in fear or move forward in courage? That's really the question for us this morning.

The Scouting Party and the Grapes

The scouting party sets out and verse 22 kind of sets up the scene. Now I want you to hear this: "And it was now the first of the grapes being harvested." You almost hear the music go, dun dun dun. Because usually in the Bible when humans get the opportunity to evaluate God or evaluate what God's up to, it doesn't go so well.

This passage has a flashback sequence to it. You know how in a movie they flashback and toggle between the present circumstances and something in history? This one is a flashback sequence to Genesis chapter three where the first man, the first woman are in the garden with God and they get to evaluate and decide what they're gonna do. The language of this passage is really funny. It's very particular. It's very precise. It's exactly the same words of Genesis three.

Look at this: Moses gives them the command: "See what the land is like. Go check it out. Is it desirable?" Exact same words used in Genesis three where the woman saw the fruit and looked at it and said, "Oh, this is really desirable for gaining wisdom." Here's where the tension is building.

Second, they go to the valley of grapes. Literally, it says Eshcol Valley—just means grape clusters. Like we say Napa, you know, "oh, the grapes out there, right?" So they go out there and they cut down this enormous cluster of grapes and it's so big they have to put it on a pole between them. To this day, if you go to Israel, this is a picture of what's all over Jerusalem because this is the ad campaign for the Ministry of Tourism for Israel. They're carrying a giant cluster of grapes saying, "Come on y'all, come visit Israel. Land flowing with milk and honey."

And again, this is a return to the question about whether to trust God or not. We're going to repeat the same thing from Genesis three. Here's what happened: in Genesis three, they're told you can eat anything else in the garden but don't eat this particular fruit, and what results in them eating it is they have to leave the garden. Well, here we are in Numbers chapters thirteen and fourteen, and it's like, "Here's the fruit—are you gonna taste it and trust God and enter in the Promised Land or are you not gonna trust God?" So it's kind of the opposite. Eat the fruit and go in. Eat the fruit and leave. That's what's set up.

Third, the other thing we see here is the spies collect not just the grapes, but they also collect two other fruits: pomegranates and figs. Both of these are really important. Pomegranates are all over one particular thing in the Old Testament. You might know what it is? Solomon. The tabernacle. When they made the tabernacle and then when they built the temple, one of the biggest decorations in that is pomegranates, and you're supposed to go like, "Right?" Because God had intended Eden to be the special place where they live with God, the tabernacle to be a place where they walk with God, the temple to be a place where they experience God, the Promised Land is going to be this place of blessing where they're with God. But will they be or not?

And the figs—we know about figs from Genesis chapter three.

Adam and Eve take fig leaves and when they discover that they're naked after they fall, they use those to cover themselves. Again, we're supposed to all these flashbacks. What are they gonna do? Are they gonna trust God this time or not?

So here's where we go. After forty days, the 12 spies return and they give their report. And everything about this Promised Land is sort of larger than life like the grapes that we saw. And here's a question: they're looking, all of them come back and they all have the same data points. In fact, they bring the data points in their hands. They bring the grapes, the pomegranates and the figs and they show them to Moses and the people, but then there's two reports and I want you to think about this because everybody's got the same evidence, the same data, but they're interpreting it differently.

One of the things that's unique to being a human being is that you and I are created as meaning makers. We're interpreting all the time. We're looking at our circumstances and we're reading off of them what's going on. What is God up to in this world? What is happening? And we're making meaning out of data points. This is part of what it means to be human. So what's weird about this is the spies, these 12 men, they come and they give a report. They get the same evidence and they give two different versions of this on the same facts.

Report Card Grades

Now, how many of you all still get a report card? Anybody still get a report card in here? Okay. Yeah, a couple of you all get report cards. Many of you remember report card day. Report card day was either really bad or really good. For some of you all, it was always bad, right? Some of you are like, it was always good, right?

But here's report card day and they're giving a report card on what they see in the land and everybody gives the first one for God the first grade the same. They all give him an A for abundance. They say this is a land that's flowing with milk and honey.

What is the phrase milk and honey mean? Why would they say it? I mean, it's weird. Nobody describes like, that was a great restaurant flowing with milk and honey. But think about those phrases. Milk is a symbol of the abundance of cultivated land. You don't get milk unless you have pasture land that livestock can grow or can eat on in a safe way and have the opportunity to produce milk in. And honey is a symbol of the abundance of wild land. It's a place that's filled with flowers where bees can collect nectar, right? So what you have here is a picture of abundance and abundance and whether you're a hunter gatherer or you're a farmer, you're going to do great in this land. That's what it means. So A for abundance, but then the report cards change.

The majority report gives God Ds and Fs and here's how they go. God gets an F for fortified cities. Cities are fortified. Now think about this, they have with them in their company 600,000 plus fighting men yet we're scared of some fortified cities.

God gets a D for descendants. Did you read this? The descendants of Anak are there. Now, if you're a good Hebrew right now, you all wouldn't be just sitting here, you'd be like, oh my. Because the descendants of Anak are named later in this passage. They're in the Nephilim. They're the giants of old. They're like, these people are enormous. These people are way bigger than us.

They give God a D also for destroyers. Listen, the Amalekites lived there. Now in Exodus 17, Israel had been defeated by the Amalekites. Lost a lot of people. D for destruction, right? They give God a D for diminishing.

Okay, hang on. I'm just trying to make all these work. Because what they describe is we were like grasshoppers in their eyes. One writer, Chuck DeGroat, puts it this way: This is the grasshopper effect. Because it's not like they went around and conducted person to person interviews—How do you see us? Are we bigger than you or smaller? They're not going around and they are projecting onto their enemies what they look like. This is a picture of their own fears and they're projecting and saying, oh, we must have looked like grasshoppers to them. We're so diminished.

Couple more grades. They give God a D for devouring. They said this land devours its inhabitants. It eats up people. Now they're holding in their hand—think about the craziness of this. They're holding in their hand giant grapes, pomegranates, figs and they're saying, and yet as good as this looks, the land eats its people.

And finally, the 10 spies give God an F for father. I mean, what a bad father that he would want to send them into this place.

And yes, there's a minority report. So Caleb, man, he is the hero of the book of Numbers. He stands up and he gives the people the William Wallace speech, Saint Crispin's Day, Henry the Fourth. Nobody.

The Animal House speech—like, we can do this, y'all. You know, let's go. Did you see what God did in Egypt? God kicked some Egyptian butt. God, we can do this. What happens? They vote him down. Why? What do we learn? Why are there two report cards, a good one and a bad one? Because we're meaning makers. We look at evidence and we're not aware that we do this but we regularly think we see the data points and we respond but that's not exactly how it goes down.

This is what really happens in life. We see the data points, we interpret, we make meaning out of what we read and then we respond. And we need to have a little bit of a pause to realize that we are actively involved in interpreting all the time, in examining and interpreting. We're meaning makers.

This is why some of them look at the land and they see gift, provision, and more than enough. And others look at the land, they see giants, destruction, and death. Because they're making meaning. They're interpreting what's going on.

I remember talking to a friend of mine, Robert Chong, who's a counselor in Louisville, Kentucky and he had a really particularly difficult case of a woman with crippling fear and she had a mantra that she would say to herself, "God is nowhere. God is nowhere. God is nowhere." And it was a statement of despair. He realized that same word, the same sentence can go from "God is nowhere" to "God is now here." And this was the big breakthrough for her. You're reading the situation wrong. You're reading the same letters wrong. You're misinterpreting reality. And this became a real breakthrough for her.

Now, true confession to you all this morning, one of my greatest weaknesses as a pastor is my lack of faith. And it's really embarrassing to admit this to you. But my elders can tell you what I'm like to be a pastor with because the numbers come out in our finances and I'm just like, oh, I don't know if God will provide this time. My family can tell you—I come home like, I still don't know what's going to happen to the church. We prayed. I don't know if God's going to do anything and then I'm shocked. I'm like, wow, God showed up. It was amazing how God has worked at our church. And my family's like, yeah, we know.

But do you realize that you do this? That you are doing this? What things are you looking at in your life right now? You actually have grape clusters in front of you and you are interpreting that in a way that's entirely like "God is nowhere, God is nowhere, God is nowhere." Do you know you're doing this? Here's a way to grow: just stop yourself and say, "Am I interpreting right now?" To ask that question. It's so key that we understand this.

Evaluating Our Expectations

Second, evaluating our expectations. Now where do those bad grades for God come from? They come from a place of disappointment. They're standing on the very brink of the promised land and they've searched this out and they're completely disappointed with the land and ultimately they're disappointed with God.

Disappointment always comes in our lives from a place where our expectations don't line up with reality and I want you to think about the expectations that are revealed in the people of God as they stand right here.

First expectation that they have and I think you have—I definitely have this—a life without obstacles. When Israel is on the brink of the promised land, they expected we're going to go to a land without any obstacles. The desert where we've been for over a year wandering around has been only obstacles. Remember when we started this series, I showed you all the pictures of the wilderness, this uninhabitable land that's all obstacles, all hardship. And now they're about to enter the promised land, they're like, wait, wait, wait. We thought obstacles are over, God.

This is like us. Paul Tripp writes this: we want a life without obstacles. We want kids that are self-parenting. We believe that God actually made a mistake in marriage—that sanctification was supposed to be completed before marriage and not during it. We want fully glorified people in our lives. I want a wife who thinks I'm summarily wonderful, who agrees with me that I'm always right, who respects my every word. I want a wife that's free from suffering and obstacles. I want no financial problems.

Very few of us wake up in the morning and say, "God, I know that suffering is one of your best tools for making me into the image of Christ. Would you send a little of that my way this week? Because that would be really helpful. I really, really want that."

Now, what do we want? We want no obstacles and it doesn't take much to ruin my day and I'm betting your day. A flat tire, that'll do it. Right? Because we don't believe that God is up to anything in those obstacles.

The reality is God wants obstacles in your life for important reasons. I want you to hear this from me. I say this in love. God wants obstacles in your life for important reasons. These obstacles are one of his primary tools for completing his work in your life. This is what he's up to. God is not done with you yet. You are in process and he's doing something awesome.

God is up to doing something awesome in you. He said that it's his goal for us to partake in the divine nature. Let me just pause and think about that. That's amazing. It's God's purpose that the presence and power of God have come into our lives to radically change us so that divine things would come out of us over time. Isn't that mind-blowing? This is what God is doing in every Christian. God's desire through obstacles in your life is to make you more and more into the likeness of Jesus so that supernatural things are going to grow up out of your life.

Now, I hate that and I love that. Don't you? Man, why does it have to be that way? But like, this is what God is up to and it's nothing short of amazing.

The Second Expectation

The second expectation that they had and I think we have is a life where you don't need to trust anymore. Here they are on the brink of the promised land and they've walked through this desert where over and over they have been in this place of vulnerability and dependency upon God. He's had to provide meal after meal for them and I bet they're exhausted of depending on God at this point and I bet you are too.

So, once upon a time there was a kite that was flying up in the sky and the kite began to talk to itself and the kite said, "If only I could get rid of this string. I hate this string. If the string wouldn't hold me back, I could really fly. I bet I could go above those clouds. I could go as high as I want to. I am limited by this string." And so one day, the kite got its wish. The string broke. And what happened to the kite? Did it go up? It went down.

And what the kite discovered was the same string that was holding it down was also holding it up. We do the same thing. We always want to cut the string. Nobody wants to be dependent upon God and we believe a life of freedom often is a life without God and we believe a life of joy is a life where we don't have to depend on him. And the reality is yet when we, if we cut that string like I'm tired of this, we crash because the same string, the same dependency that holds us down is the same that holds us up.

Being a kite is hard. I know you're tired of being a kite. I am tired of being a kite. Tired of depending on God. I'm tired of trusting God. Israel is tired of it. We're tired of it. A life of courage is one of dependency upon God, of having to trust Him.

Finally, Flex Your Faith

Again, this passage shows us a contrast between fear on the one hand and courage on the other—between the 10 spies and the majority report which was all negative, all Ds and Fs for God, and the minority report that's like, let's go. Let's do this. And it challenges how we think about faith. What we think faith is and how it works.

Faith is not just a series of beliefs. Faith is a muscle that you flex. Faith is a muscle you must exercise. That's why I keep talking about courage versus fear. When we think of trying to stop being afraid, it's something that it's hard to do. If you wake up in the middle of the night and you're filled with fear, it is paralyzing and you can't just be like, "Okay, I'm gonna stop that right now." You can't even really repent it away. Have you noticed this?

And when you hear in scripture, there are over and over this refrain is given to God's people. In fact, there are 365 places in the Bible where you could find the same command:

Don't fear. Don't be afraid, for I am with you.

Over and over that's repeated, but it's a weird command, isn't it? It's not a command like, "Stop it, y'all!" That's not how this works. It's actually a command that's really an invitation. It's calling us to something. It's inviting us to not be afraid.

For example, if I say to you right now, "Hey, don't think of the word elephant. Don't think of the word elephant. Don't think of the word elephant." This is what we do sometimes with fear. Stop it. Got to stop it. Must stop being afraid. Don't be afraid. What word are you not supposed to remember? Elephant. Right? You can't do that. It doesn't work. This is not a light switch. It's not like, "Okay, now I'm gonna stop fearing."

Rather, you've got to get underneath it. This is why in this sermon I'm pushing on you to stop mistrusting your meaning-making and evaluate your expectations and then flex your faith. This is how you get underneath fear.

The great preacher from London, D. Martin Lloyd Jones, did an incredible sermon on fear that I've never forgotten. He's talking about that moment where Jesus is in the boat with his disciples. If you remember, lots of the disciples had been fishermen. They're on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus has been teaching. He's exhausted. He falls asleep in the front of the boat and a storm blows up—a superstorm. These veteran sailors are suddenly afraid for their lives. The wind is tremendous and the waves are overtaking the boat and Jesus is still asleep.

Do you remember what the disciples say to him? "Wake up. Don't you care if I drown? Don't you care if we die?" Jesus wakes up and he calms the sea and he calms the storm and he turns to them and says something that's really shocking and really challenging to the way that Americans look at faith.

Do not fear. Where is your faith? Do not be afraid. Where is your faith?

Here's Jesus. He's with them in the boat and he asks them a question which challenges the way we think about faith. Jesus doesn't say, "Oh, I'm sorry. You need some faith? Here you go." What does Jesus do? He says, "You have faith. Why didn't you use it? You've watched me teach, you've seen me feed the 5,000, you've watched me perform miracles, you've watched me raise the dead. I've been with you every step of the way. I love you. I've saved you and I'm going to save you. Where is your faith? Did you put it somewhere? You leave it at home? Is it under your pillow?"

Because faith—this is why I'm saying flex your faith. I'm working this out because faith in this sense of courage is active. It's not passive. It's not resignation. It's actively remembering who God is and what God has done.

This is why in Numbers chapter 14, verse 22, God tells the people:

You saw my glory in what I did in Egypt.

He's telling these people, "You don't believe? You saw what I have done. You need to take what you've seen of me and apply it in your present. Flex your faith. Exercise it now. If we can win the Super Bowl, why do you think that playing the local high school football team is going to be hard?"

Remember, faith is not resignation. It's not, "Oh well, guess this is what's going to happen." It's taking what you know about God and applying it actively. Fear is an absence of thinking. Fear is passive. Fear is giving in to the data points and your interpretation and your expectations.

In Numbers 14, Caleb argues with the people. Now Caleb is the hero of this book. What's funny about Caleb is his name means dog in Hebrew—it's an insult. He's only half Jewish and yet he continues to be this man of courage. He calls out to the people and tries to convince them. He says:

Only don't do this. Don't rebel against the Lord and be afraid of the people of the land.

Now, what he's saying there is really fascinating because we think of fear as something that we have no power over and no control over, something that just happens to us. But he's saying fear and rebellion are the same thing. There's an aspect to our fear and giving into fear that is the same thing as rebelling against God. There's something about this that is really sobering.

This is why D. Martin Lloyd Jones says that faith is a refusal to panic. It's taking what you know of God out of the abstract and putting it in your presence. It's flexing a muscle. It's saying, "I won't be controlled by the circumstances. I'm going to be controlled by the truth of who God is and what he's done."

Unbelief and fear are deep sin for Christians. And I'll confess myself as the greatest sinner here. I love how John Owen puts this in his book Communion with God. He says:

The greatest sorrow and burden that you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness that you can do him, is to not believe that God loves you.

Do you know that? Unbelief and fear—these are deep problems for us. They're a form of rebellion in us. Flex your faith.

Be of good courage, people of God. I want to ask you this: What clusters of fruit are you looking at right now? What are the ways that God has actually shown up? What are the data points that God has right in front of you that you're not looking at? Where are you saying God is nowhere? God is nowhere. God is nowhere. What would it look like for you to exercise courage today?

The Consequence of Fear

You know what happens as a result of this moment of fear in the camp? This is one of the saddest moments in the history of Israel. God says, "Okay." God is a gentleman with the people of Israel. He neither destroys them nor abandons them, but he says, "Okay, you don't have to go in. I'm not gonna make you go in."

So for forty years, one for each day that the spies were scouting out the land, you're going to remain outside the promised land. You're gonna remain wandering in the desert for forty years until this whole generation dies off. We'll see if the kids will trust God and if they'll believe him and go in.

It's so sad and you know, it didn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way and this morning, I wanna just tell you again, God is inviting you to a place of courage. I don't know what you're dealing with. For many of you, we're facing a lot of heavy things. Like I read those list of fears, there's a lot to be afraid of. I don't want to pretend and say there's nothing to be afraid of. No, we're grown ups. There's a lot to be afraid of. But there's an invitation this morning to courage, to trust in God.

Courage in Community

One thing that makes courage work is community. This is an example here of how discouragement and fear can spread to a community, but courage really thrives in a community.

When we were first married, we lived in Florida outside Orlando and our backyard was filled with anthills. These were not like North Carolina nice little black ants that just want sugar water and maybe to eat your wood on your deck, but these were red ants. You ever stepped on a red ant? You ever got bitten by a red ant? It hurts. I mean, a red ant, it's not going to kill you, it's not going to ruin your day, but a little red ant, it's insignificant. You can smush it, but it has an impact. But if you step on the anthill, then all the brothers and sisters come out and you'll know real quick. I mean it hurts if you get red ants all over your leg, all under your socks, all down in your shoes, it is extremely painful.

Courage among Christians works when we are with God's people. My admonition to you today is to take some action after this sermon. Don't leave us and go like, "Hey, that was a great message. I'm glad I could hear about that. I'm gonna go back by my little ant self and think about these things." No. Brothers and sisters, you need an anthill. And if you don't have an anthill, you better find an anthill and you don't have to go to one of our anthills, but we got a bunch in our church who would love to have some more ants.

We have one-to-one Bible reading. You want to read the Bible with somebody and be encouraged, getting in God's word together? We have an opportunity for that. We have 100 people doing it right now. Room for more. You want to join a community group. We got community groups. Well, anthills, they're not perfect, but man, they're trying to encourage each other. They're trying to live out life together in community.

For some of y'all it's like, join the church. We've been dating for a while, we'd love to have you. Come be part of our anthill. We love you. And if not here, that's okay. Go somewhere else. We want to make sure that everybody has an anthill, but you need an anthill. You can't do this alone. Courage thrives in community, in relationship.

Brothers and sisters, will you trust him? Will you trust him? You need courage today. Let's go to the Father and ask him. Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. And we are fearful people living in a fearful time and there's plenty for us to be honestly fearful about. And Lord, yet we thank you that you are with us, your spirit is in us. Lord, we thank you that you've invited us into not just a show on a Sunday, but into a spiritual community. Lord, I pray Father for opportunities for us to take steps today to walk away from fear, to embrace courage, to question our meaning making, to evaluate our expectations, to flex our faith. We pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen.

Would you stand and sing together in response to God's Word.