Numbers 13 is pretty disappointing stuff. If you didn’t know the story and were rooting for the home team all your hopes get dashed here. The spies check out the land, they report back and everything goes south. If you have reflected a little on the story you may have asked yourself, “Why does Moses ask the spies to answer questions God has already answered?” After all, God had repeatedly told the Israelites that He was going to give them the land and that it was rich with the blessings which flowed like milk and honey. So why did he ask that they [s]ee what the land is like (13: 18)? We have to wait until Deuteronomy 1 to find out.
In Deuteronomy, Moses explained, Then all of you approached me and said, ‘Let’s send men ahead of us, so that they may explore the land for us and bring us back a report about the route we should go up and the cities we will come to.’ (Deut. 1: 22). Apparently the Lord’s instruction to Moses in Numbers 13: 1 was once again a concession to the grumbling Israelites. Sending spies was not necessarily the problem as Joshua would later prove (Josh. 2: 1). The problem lay in essentially empowering these men to make a decision which belonged only to God. Since each represented a leader among them from each of their ancestral tribes (13: 2) they must have perceived themselves as representatives responsible for choosing for their constituents. Such a perspective was bound to spell disaster for the nation and it did.
Caleb and Joshua, who brought the minority report, tried unsuccessfully to convince the people to follow God’s original leading but it was not to be. Kadesh, which was to be the vista to victory, became the desert of defeat instead. Thirty eight more long years awaited them in the wilderness all because of bad reporting. The truth is the majority is most often wrong! The masses cannot often be trusted. Fear, cowardice and selfishness too often drive group decisions resulting in disobedience for one and all.
When the spies went in, what they needed most was not to see the land but to see the Lord. Their focus should not have been primarily on the place but on the promise God had given insuring their total conquest of every foe. Too often, the church suffers from the paralysis of analysis. There is nothing wrong and much to be commended in researching before reaching out. The danger comes when we bury our Bibles beneath a sea of paper and neglect the good promise of a good God Who has already guaranteed our victory.