A Bad Report (Numbers 13)

Josh and Zane discuss the Israelite spies giving Moses a negative report.

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SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Clear Path Scripture Podcast. I'm here today with my dear friend, Mr. Josh Tomko. What's up, Josh?

SPEAKER_00 0:15

What's up?

SPEAKER_01 0:17

I think you'll all enjoy this episode because I did not ask Josh to do a podcast with me at all until I set these microphones down next to us while we were having coffee. Well, I was having tea because coffee's gross, but Josh was having coffee. And uh I set these mics down and said, Hey Josh, you want to do a podcast? And he graciously agreed. So here we go. We are still in the lovely book of Numbers. We're gonna talk about chapter 13 today. We're gonna start at verse 26. And just for context here, Moses has sent 12 spies out to check out the land that is the land that God has promised to them. And they're supposed to go check out the land and tell them what it's like. And so here they come back with their report. Numbers 13, 26. They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the desert of Peran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land, which just a few verses earlier we heard that the grapes are so big that even to carry one cluster of grapes, they had to carry a large branch between them, between a couple guys. They gave Moses this account. We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey. Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. Alright, and just so y'all know, we know those are giants. The Amalekites live in the Negev, the Hittites, Jebuzites, and Amorites live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan. Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it. But the men who had gone up with him said, We can't attack those people, they are stronger than we are. And they spread a they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. So when I read this, uh when I read this passage, the first and most obvious, probably taught-on thing here is just the question of faith, right? Yeah. God has sent them traveling across the desert, and here it is, time for them to go explore.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yeah, and I think it's always interesting with the Israelites, which it's easy to look back and judge them for kind of being in these mindsets of not trusting God when they've already seen him be so faithful with so many things before, bringing them out of Egypt. Um, I mean, they've they've seen him move in amazing ways and already be faithful to what he's what he's told them, and yet they're still scared to trust him on these on these missions and on the things that he's that he's calling them to in the promised land.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

And I think it's interesting, like they they come back with the fruit of the land. Like they they have the fruit of the promise of what God has trying to give to them. Yeah. And yet they're still not convinced that God's going to give them the thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

But um, yeah, they see how good it could be. They they've seen God do it before. But man, I do this every time, every time I read the Old Testament now and read about the Israelites, when I was younger, I think that I just thought, you people are stupid.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Just trust him.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah. And now I think every time I'm like, yeah, that's me. Because I have so many times, if all of you on this podcast hear the helicopter going over us, well, sorry, I'll see if I can cut it out on the in the editing the podcast, but we're gonna keep talking. So there's so many times in my life where I've seen God do a miracle, for example, and then the next time it's time to pray for a miracle, I doubt and I say, Man, is God really gonna do this? Or, you know, God has given me a business and blessed it over time. And a few weeks ago, man, I was really in the dumps and anxious over how poorly our business was was going. And I just I was having a hard time finding in myself to truly have faith. And then since then, of course, God came through again, as he always does. But man, we can just be really weak in our faith.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Yeah. I think it I think it's always easier to look at the problems instead of trusting God. The problems give us a reason to not trust God and to not have to take a step of faith. And so I think we can use those those problems and those things that we fear as a as a reason to not have to step out in faith and to kind of trust ourselves and trust what what we can do and trust our own might. Um yeah, it's easier, it's easier to look at that because whenever we choose to step out in faith or we choose to trust God in something, then we're taking control out of our hands. And we no longer, we're no longer in charge of it. And that's a lot, a much more difficult place to be than being the one who's flying the airplanes.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, and we have very visible problems, which is kind of like you were alluding to. We have very visible problems, and no matter how you slice it, we have a very invisible God who we've seen act visibly many times, yeah, but still at any given moment, he's a little hard to grasp, and the problem is, you know, right in front of your face. I think that this is what impresses me about a lot of the, you know, if we call them Bible heroes, people like Abraham, that it constantly says things about him like he believed, and his the get God accounted his faith to him as righteousness because God told him something was gonna happen and he believed it would happen. So I think one of the greatest calls of a Christian is to listen to what God says is going to happen, and to actually just simply believe. Like even uh Jesus says, I don't remember this is, I think it's somewhere early in John, but he says, He says that the work of God is to believe in the one that he sent. And so a lot of times I think we're wanting to make things happen and we're gonna we're wanting to strive and do things in our own effort. Whereas the actual most important answer is that we have faith and we believe that God will do what he said he's gonna do, and that we refuse to waver from that.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

And you know, I've been thinking about that lately with the context of heaven, and it just comes to my mind right now as I think about this, because they were going to a promised land, right? And we are we are participating in the next exodus where God is sending us to a promised land that we are awaiting. And we really need the ability to hold on to the idea of a promised, beautiful, amazing eternity in our hearts. And it actually changes, I think it really changes the way that we live if we can have a belief that doesn't waver, that there is a promised land coming, that there is an eternal world, and that I in 2 Corinthians it talks about that that then we will fix our eyes on what is unseen rather than what is seen. And I think that that is sometimes difficult, but so life-giving.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to keep that that vision whenever we see. I don't know. There's so much, so many things again going back to like they they looked at all the problems. It's hard to keep that vision when we're looking at the problems instead of looking at at God. I think that's I think that's a big thing that that they were doing. And I think uh I think it's coming to a place of figuring out how to how to quiet the noise. Like I the verse, verse 30 it says, But Caleb quieted the people. That really stuck out to me that he had to quiet the noise to try and share what God was doing. And I think sometimes in our life we we get so much noise built up around us, so many, so many things that I don't know that we can put our trust in instead of God. And I think sometimes it takes quieting that noise to be able to refocus our perspective on why we're here and what we have promised before us.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, and they have they have very reasonable fears. You know, they they're going they're real things. They're like those are giants. Yeah, you know, those are huge people that we can see out there and we know they're great warriors. And so this seems like a bad idea. And I think about all the things that come against us in life, whether it's uh just anxieties in our own life, whether it's sin that has entangled us, whether it is, you know, we have people in our church dealing with hard things. We have people in our church dealing with cancer, we have people in our church dealing with uh job loss, we have people in our church dealing with uh uh hard relationships and just not knowing the right things to do. And it's easy to look at those things and it feels trite to say, hey, just have faith, just believe in God. Because the problems are real. Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

And the giants they're not going away in a second, you're still walking through them.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Yeah, the giants were real. The people had to go, they you have to remember they had to take weapons when God told them to and plan to go fight these giants.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

And so that's truly scary. And and I don't think that God is downplaying that, but he wants, he's calling us up into faith to look and say, hey, number one, trust me in my power. And number two, trust and believe that there is this promised land that I've prepared for you that's going to be yours. Because when we deal with all these uh these sufferings and these difficulties in life, they are temporal. And they're going back, I think it's 2 Corinthians again, maybe around what I was where I was talking about earlier, but it says um it says that the the weight of these uh these passing difficulties is nothing compared to the glory that is to come, right? That's the idea. And so I just I just want to encourage all of us to fix our minds and our faith today, not only that God has the solution for what you're going through right now, which He does, but also that there actually is a promised land and that the end is not in this life, but the end is in clinging to the promise that God is eternally going to make all things right and just, and that the life that we're living now is just a blip on the timeline. My brother preached that one Sunday, that it's we're just a tiny dot on the timeline of our lives and the eternity that we have with God. So, Lord, I just pray that you would help us to remember that and truly believe that, God, that you would truly stir faith in our hearts, that we would not be those who give in to doubt. We can't help the thoughts that jump into our mind for a second. But God, I pray that you would help us to take every thought captive and that it would become obedient to faith in you, Jesus Christ our Lord, and in you, Father, who are preparing a good place for us and a good eternity for us, and that you're preparing us to see goodness, even here in the land of the living, as we make our way to the promised land that you are preparing for us and giving to us. So, God, we thank you and we just let our hearts be renewed with faith right now. In Jesus' name. Amen. Josh, love you, bro.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Love you.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

See you guys later.