Читать книгу The Grand Sweep - Large Print - J. Ellsworth Kalas - Страница 64

NUMBERS 13–15

Week 8, Day 4

The church committee is at least as old as this story in Numbers 13. The plan was good: Get one representative from each tribe to search out the land and bring back a report. And they seem to have done their work well. But collected data is no better than the committee that interprets it, and in this case a large majority saw the data negatively. They confessed readily that it was a good land, flowing with milk and honey. But the towns were fortified, the people strong. How strong? “To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (13:33). The sequence in their analysis is right, of course; when we see ourselves as grasshoppers, others will soon see us the same way.

Ten people felt that way. But Caleb spoke for himself and Joshua: “Let us go up . . . we are well able” (13:30). The difference in their points of view came from an intangible factor, as it so often does. Caleb and Joshua were confident of God’s help: “The LORD is with us; do not fear them” (14:9).

But the nation believed the negative report, not simply because it came from the majority, but because it is almost always easier to retreat than to move forward. So the Lord declared that none of that adult generation except Caleb and Joshua would enter the promised land. This is a rule of life; those who live in doubt, despair, and reluctance are sure to miss the best that God has for them.

PRAYER: Save me, O Lord, from seeing myself as a grasshopper. I want to enter into your promised land! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The twelve spies were all working with the same data. How do you explain the different responses of the majority and the minority?