Doubt God or Trust God -- the people's decision in Numbers 13
- mww
- 1 hour ago
- 17 min read
People will invent myths to convince themselves not to trust God.
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for Numbers 13
This week's passage gives us a critical event in the history of Israel -- God's command to prepare to take the Promised Land, and the people's decision to doubt God's ability to "deliver". It's an interesting parallel to events today in which Christians have to decide to trust God and boldly hold forth the word of life to a lost and dying world.
“Let’s go up now and take possession of the land because we can certainly conquer it!” (13:30)
Getting Started: Things to Think About
What's Your Land of Milk and Honey?
The Promised Land is described as a land flowing with milk and honey. As someone who doesn't particularly care for milk or honey (let it be an ingredient, not a feature), that's not the most appealing description to me. But I get the point. The Promised Land is a land of variety and abundance (more on this below), perfect for God's people.
What would be your "promised land" if you had your druthers?
[If you're really feeling adventurous, evaluate your answer -- how selfish is it? Remember that the Promised Land was to be the home for all of God's people and the launching point for their worldwide mission. For example, my "Promised Land" of a perfect tropical island with no other inhabitants is not a great answer.]
An Intimidating Venture You Succeeded At
This might be your "Facing the Giants" story (that wonderful little movie is now 20 years old, so you might not have seen it; worth the watch). What's a thing you (or your church) did where "the odds" were quite stacked against you? I'm not talking about something that was simply difficult; I'm talking about something where you faced real opposition. Maybe your business went into a new line of products. Maybe your church went into a new community. Maybe your school launched a new program that parents were against. What's it like to face opposition? And what's it like when you overcome that opposition?
God intended His people to enter the Promised Land, and the process of conquering it would galvanize them into The People of God as they experienced success after success. Instead, they cowered and disintegrated, and God waited a full generation to give them another opportunity.
Saying "No" to God
Non-Christians constantly say no to God in the only way that truly matter. "Come to Jesus." "No." So for this discussion topic, I'm making the reckless assumption that you are a Christian.
When was a time you said "no" to God? Why? And what was the outcome?
The Bible is filled with examples of people telling God "no". This week's passage -- the Israelites refusing to enter the Promised Land -- might be the most famous (or it might be Jonah). The point is that it happens, and we still do it today.
This might prompt a valuable side-discussion on "how do I know what God is saying to me?" God speaks through His Spirit (which is "poured out" into the heart of every Christian) and His Word (the Bible), and those two are in agreement. In my experience, sometimes God communicates rather clearly, and sometimes I think He expects me to listen closely. The most common way I fail to listen to God is by getting ahead of Him, of asking for guidance but not actually waiting for God to answer. That's a kind of "no". God of course remained with me in whatever happened next, but I am confident that things would have been better if I had just waited.
How about you?
Clashing Visions
A Continuation of Last Week's Lesson
This article better applied to last week, but it was just published on Tuesday, so there you go. Lifeway published research about pastors who quit --
The most important takeaway is that only 1% of pastors quit in a year -- not the epidemic that certain media sources would have us believe.
But for those pastors who did leave the ministry, here are the top factors in order:
Being in a church of 250 or more
Being older than 55
Experiencing conflict over politics
Believing they are personally responsible for the church's growth
Feeling isolated
Experiencing significant conflict
Obviously, most of those apply really well to what we read last week. Moses was certainly a candidate to quit!
For this topic, I want to focus on one of the causes of conflict: clashing visions. Have you ever been in a church where the pastor had a vision for the church that did not match that of other leaders in the church? Sadly, this happens regularly, and often in the early months of a new pastorate. Assuming you can talk about this reasonably and constructively, talk about the cause and the outcome.
From my anecdotal experience, this happens in a church either when the pastor tries to be Moses or the congregation acts like the children of Israel. In other words, the pastor imposes a vision that is not shared by the congregation and does not take the time to build consensus around it. Or, the congregation is simply refusing to listen to God's clear leading and chooses to dig in their heels.
In a Christian church, where everybody has the Spirit of God (not just the leader), we work together to "discern the mind of Christ" as Paul would say. God puts people into the church with the spiritual gift of discernment, of encouragement, of leadership, and of wisdom (and many more) so that God's people can (1) know His leadership, (2) know how God has enabled His church to follow, and (3) have the confidence and courage to follow.
In other words, not what happens in this week's passage. If you think your group can talk reasonably about this topic, then you can use this to help them see the difference between how a healthy church should function and how a dysfunctional group (like the children of Israel) will always fail.
Afraid of the Giants
A Continuation of Last Week's Lesson
Charlie Kirk was assassinated after I had posted last week's notes, and you probably found ways to apply his example and experience to the situation in last week's passage.
For this week, I want to consider the reaction. Some influencers and personalities have looked at this tragedy and said, "Maybe I need to pull back on my activities and play it a little safer." And others have said, "No amount of opposition is going to dissuade me from broadcasting my message."
And as you might expect, the conservative Christians pretty much fall into the category of bold faith. (I pray that they don't get unnecessarily reckless and provocative, but that's a topic for another day.)
That's similar to what we see happening in this week's passage: the people look at the opportunity God has provided them, see the opposition that awaits them, and generally all say, "Nah, that's too dangerous." Two Israelites, however, say, "We can take it!"
If your group has been following the Charlie Kirk story, it might be a worthwhile illustration to get them thinking about the various reactions to last week's tragedy and seeing how they reflect the attitudes in this week's passage.
This Week's Big Idea: Honey in Canaan?
Early in seminary, I stumbled across an article suggesting that "land of milk and honey" was intended to be literal -- that there were bees in the Promised Land. That ran contrary to the prevailing attitude at the time that "honey" referred to fruit secretion or whatnot. I can't find that article, but that idea has always stuck with me. I believe that the Promised Land was full of mammal-produced milk and bee-produced honey.
Now, why does that matter?
Unfortunately, we understand its importance from some negative articles in the recent news.
Honeybees are vital to agriculture. They pollinate plants. For free. A land full of honey implied a land full of honeybees which would be shorthand for "extremely fertile".
Honey was more than a cooking ingredient. It's a natural sweetener (it makes food taste better) (or so they say). Beeswax has a near-infinite set of uses. It was also rare in the ancient world (beekeeping dramatically increases honey production), so a place with a lot of natural honey would be marvelous indeed. (Interestingly, early Israelites did keep bees:
As for milk, you know the uses for milk -- sweet milk, cheese, butter. Even sour milk could be used in certain recipes. Most milk came from goats and sheep, although there were some cows.
The point being that "flowing with milk" suggested a land that could support large herds -- quite a statement in a land surrounded by desert!
Long story short, "flowing with milk and honey" was just a poetic way of describing a fertile land that could support a large population.
Bonus Big Idea: The Nephilim and the Anak?
This week's focal passage ends with 13:31, so it surprised me to see a short feature on the "Nephilim" and the "Anakim", both of whom are mentioned in verse 33 as a reason why the Israelites chose to disobey God out of fear. I'm glad Lifeway included that feature; you'll see that I recommend taking your lesson through the end of the chapter precisely because these two references are so telling.
Let's start with the Nephilim. These are famous from Genesis 6:
6:4 The Nephilim were on the earth both in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came to the daughters of mankind, who bore children to them. They were the powerful men of old, the famous men.
There are lots of modern myths about them, that they were giants, or half-man-half-angel. But the word "nephilim" just means "fallen ones". So, sorry to disappoint, but these were just mighty, fallen men. Great warriors. Great leaders. Corrupt and wicked.
They were also wiped out in the flood.
My guess is that they were reintroduced by name with Moses' account of Genesis as told by God, and the people latched onto them. One of the themes of this part of the Bible is the people's fear and doubt. Mentioning the Nephilim suggests that they were so fearful and doubting that they made up things to be afraid of. Think about it. The Nephilim hadn't existed for thousands of years. No Israelite knew what they looked like. They were bringing to life their own superstitions in order to doubt God. (Granted, the Philistines at least had "giants", right? Goliath was no joke.)
Then let's talk about the Anakim -- the "people of Anak". We don't know anything about them other than they were tall (Deut 2:10), and that one of their cities was Kiriath-arba (the ancient name for Hebron, located next to the Dead Sea). You just need to consider them "mythically giant" along the lines of the Nephilim, something people decided to be scared of. Do you know who wasn't scared of them? Joshua and Caleb. Joshua 11 describes how Joshua led the people to wipe out the Anakim in the Promised Land proper. Joshua 14 and 15 describe how Caleb (you'll learn more about him today) chose to believe God's promise and almost singlehandedly wiped out all of the remaining Anakim. The point is that with God, those giants were no real obstacle.
So, that's the importance of these references:
in fear, we can create reasons to doubt God that don't exist (the Nephilim);
in faith, we can conquer the real giants with God's help (the Anakim).
Bonus Big Idea: Why Canaan?
We've talked about this before. Why did God put His people in Canaan, smack dab in the middle of a world-wide war zone for the next 3,000 years? There's a war being fought in the Promised Land right now!
Of course, the most straightforward answer is that the Promised Land was a land of abundance and beauty (Ex 3:8), and if the people had obeyed God, He would have kept them safe and whole. Deuteronomy 11 has a lot to say about this:
11:12 If you listen to and are careful to keep these ordinances, the Lord your God will keep his covenant loyalty with you, as he swore to your ancestors. 13 He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will bless your offspring, and the produce of your land—your grain, new wine, and fresh oil—the young of your herds, and the newborn of your flocks, in the land he swore to your ancestors that he would give you. 14 You will be blessed above all peoples; there will be no infertile male or female among you or your livestock. 15 The Lord will remove all sickness from you; he will not put on you all the terrible diseases of Egypt that you know about, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.
But I personally think that we don't fully understand this plan without Jesus. God sent Jesus under the Roman Empire, a regime that brought the value of the Palestine "land bridge" into focus.
Put it on a plain map, and it's easier to see that the Promised Land sits on the route connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia. In other words, from the Promised Land, God's people could get to just about anywhere in the known world. And with the Romans building out the road network and adding garrisons for safety, the early Christian church did just that.
Back to this week's passage. That was God's plan for the Jews as well -- they were to be a blessing to the whole earth. We have records of Solomon communicating with some distant peoples. But God's people never fully got over themselves. They put themselves before pretty much everybody else, including God's servants the prophets.
Where We Are in Numbers
Numbers starts with the census (of the faithless generation) and God's instructions for an orderly march across the desert to the Promised Land. Last week, we encountered our first major red flag with the people complaining that their miraculous food from heaven wasn't tasty enough. Moses has a meltdown, and God responds by "forcing" Moses to delegate.
We skip chapter 12, in which we learn that even Aaron and Miriam have decided to oppose Moses. (!!) If any of y'all have had conflict with siblings, you know how crushing that can be.
Anyway, at the end of that, we learn that the people are camped in the Desert of Paran (which is the region kinda south of Kadesh-Barnea on this map):
Chapter 13 opens with God's command,
Send men to scout out the land of Canaan I am giving to the Israelites. Send one man who is a leader among them from each of their ancestral tribes.
Our passage walks through what happens next. For our purposes, know that the "spies" traveled for 40 days -- it was a lot of distance. The people were not camped "too close" to the Promised Land.
Part 1: The Assignment (Numbers 13:17-20)
17 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. 18 See what the land is like, and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. 19 Is the land they live in good or bad? Are the cities they live in encampments or fortifications? 20 Is the land fertile or unproductive? Are there trees in it or not? Be courageous. Bring back some fruit from the land.” It was the season for the first ripe grapes.
That simple map I included above might be too simple. The Negev is basically southern Canaan -- think of it as the area around Beer-sheba.
Moses (passing along God's instruction) made this simple: spy out the land. Give us a report. Count the people, count the settlements, describe the terrain.
If you have a military history group, talk about the foolishness of a blind campaign. God wanted His people to be prepared.
He also wanted them to know how good the land was, that it really was "flowing with milk and honey".
Note his call to "be courageous" -- that was supposed to be the starting point of this campaign. Courage. Let's see how that goes.
This section of the lesson is about explaining the geography and making sure your group remembers all of the trouble the people have already caused on this journey.
Aside: Was It "Fair" What God Was Doing?
If you do any amount of online research on this week's passage, you will find "think pieces" from people who argue that it wasn't fair or just for God to "take away the Promised Land from its lawful inhabitants". We've talked about this at length because it shows up pretty regularly in the Torah.
This article from the Bible Project does a good job explaining the situation:
Here are the main points:
Divine judgment, not human violence
Divine patience with human evil
Divine impartiality
It's not Israel vs. Canaan
There were overtures of peace
Looking ahead to Jesus
If you still have questions after reading that article, let me know.
Part 2: Doing the Assignment (Numbers 13:21-25)
21 So they went up and scouted out the land from the Wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob near the entrance to Hamath. 22 They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were living. Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. 23 When they came to Eshcol 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. 24 That place was called Eshcol Valley because of the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut there. 25 At the end of forty days they returned from scouting out the land.
The spies (scouts?) went all the way north to Rehob (a city in Syria). My guess is that on their way back, they stopped near Hebron in order to collect a remarkable cluster of grapes (so large that it took two men to carry it).
This is where we're given a foreshadowing of "the Anakim" (see above). Very tall people.
[This is just me speculating -- could it be that the "descendants of Anak" were so tall because they had such a plentiful, healthy diet? I don't want to get into the politics of diet here, but I can't help but wonder if that had something to do with how strong and intimidating those people appeared.]
[About Hebron. Hebron is the only location where Abraham "owned" property (Gen 23), and it's where Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were all buried. In other words, it's an important city in terms of symbolism of God's promises (even if the people didn't know it). There's also this juicy tidbit about it being "seven years older than Zoan". Some scholars associate Zoan with Tanis, but Tanis isn't particularly old, so that might not be helpful. We know that Hebron is older than Abraham (making it one of the oldest cities in the world). So, I take from this that "Zoan" was the name given to a city in Egypt that the Israelites thought was old. The point is that Hebron was an established, probably important, city.]
The point of this section -- the scouts did what Moses asked of them. They followed "the letter of the law".
My question for you to think about: did they really do what God asked of them?
Part 3: Pulling the Rug (Numbers 13:26-31)
26 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, and they showed them the fruit of the land. 27 They reported to Moses, “We went into the land where you sent us. Indeed it is flowing with milk and honey, and here is some of its fruit. 28 However, the people living in the land are strong, and the cities are large and fortified. We also saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 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 and along the Jordan.”
30 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!” 31 But the men who had gone up with him responded, “We can’t attack the people because they are stronger than we are!”
Let's start with all of these names. Long story short is they were the names of the various tribes that inhabited the region. This map represents the conventional wisdom on who was who, but know that there is not full agreement. Also, note that some of these tribes had different names for one another (and themselves), making this a tough subject to nail down.
This must have been such a gut-punch to Moses (and Joshua and Caleb). The scouts bring their report to the people -- "it's a good land just like God described" but . . . "we can't take it".
How depressing.
You might want to remind your group of the events of the Book of Exodus. Long story short, God easily destroyed what was considered the greatest army in the world (at the time). Egypt did not have a chance.
It's now a year later, and everyone has forgotten.
Now, call attention to the setup for the passage. The men sent were leaders of the different tribes. And Moses told them to be courageous. And this is what they came back with.
Aside: The Numbers in Numbers
I've talked about this at length, as well (although I just realized that I haven't posted my old notes on these passages). Here's an article I wrote that goes into way more detail than you need:
In my opinion, the fact that there were millions of Jews and tens or hundreds of thousands of Canaanites is a big part of the stain on the faithfulness of the people. Sure, they were former slaves, not soldiers. Sure, the people of the land were armed and trained. They were "mightier". But the Israelites had zero reason to cower in fear -- and that's before we remember that God would do the fighting for them! This is the worst possible look for the leaders of the people (again, apart from Moses and Joshua and Caleb).
Back to the passage.
When the people say that "they are stronger than we are", in what ways might they be right, and in what ways are they wrong?
Ultimately, it doesn't matter in the least that the people were bigger and stronger than the Israelites, does it?
But in the minds of the Israelites, they became giants who were even bigger than God. Have you ever turned a problem or an obstacle into something too big for God to handle?
Henry Ford is credited with a statement like, "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." That's interesting. And in a way, it applies here. "If you think God can, you're right. If you think God can't, you're wrong, but He may leave you to flounder as discipline for your doubt."
The thing is that the Bible tells us that "whether or not God does is not for us to decide or command". For example, in Matthew 13:58 Jesus did not do miracles because the people doubted. But in Mark 9:24, Jesus did a miracle despite the father's doubt. But here in Numbers 13, the people's doubt is in direct rebellion against God as a display of their lack of faith. That's not something God will excuse.
We'll talk more about the consequences next week.
This week's passage sets up one of the most important events in the Old Testament -- the glorious exodus from Egypt followed by the pathetic wandering in the wilderness. The power of God to save followed by proof of the need of the people for a Savior. Make sure your group is familiar with the basics of this event as well as its importance.
We will learn more about Caleb in the future, but you want to draw attention to his name. Ten tribes chose to be fearful. Two tribes chose to trust God -- Ephraim (Hoshea/Joshua) and Judah (Caleb). Thus Joshua and Caleb were the only two of all the Hebrew adults allowed by God to enter the Promised Land (not even Moses entered the Promised Land!). That's why we honor those men.
Closing Thoughts: Numbers 13:32-33
32 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. 33 We even saw the Nephilim there—the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim! To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and we must have seemed the same to them.”
I mentioned that our focal passage doesn't include these verses. Read them. The doubters among the people have resorted to making things up for the purpose of discouraging God's people. This is not just doubt, this is willful misleading.
If someone doesn't want a church to do something, and they make up reasons why, is that a problem? When I listen to "all sides of a decision", I assume that the people representing those sides are doing so honestly. No wonder the Israelites latched on to the naysayers! They were already fomenting in doubt; this easily swept them over the edge.