“The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. We even saw giants there…Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!”
“…don’t be afraid of the people of the land. They are only helpless prey to us! They have no protection, but the Lord is with us! Don’t be afraid of them!”
Numbers 13:32-33, 14:9
Twelve spies explored the same land and saw the same people, so why such conflicting reports?
Ten saw the people in the land as giants, and themselves as grasshoppers.
Two saw the people in the land as helpless, and the LORD as the Giant.
The difference was in their focus…
Ten saw the bounty of the land but focused on the giants.
Two saw the giants but focused on the bounty of the Lord.
Faith is difficult when we don’t look beyond ourselves. Faith requires focusing on GOD more than our weakness or our circumstance. The more we see GOD for who He is, the more we KNOW what He can do! That’s why the two spies had faith that GOD would defeat the giants.
On the contrary, the ten spies’ focus gave them a skewed interpretation of the situation: they not only saw themselves as grasshoppers beside those giants, but they assumed the giants also saw THEM as grasshoppers. How Satan loves to fool God’s people! Years later when two other spies landed in Jericho, they discovered that those assumed giants were actually living in terror of the assumed “grasshoppers!” (Joshua 2:9-11)
So, let our focus be on the size and power of our God...
Then we won’t be confused about who are the giants and who are the grasshoppers!
