The Same Land, and Two Reports

Twelve men went into the same country for forty days.

That is the control in the experiment, and it is why Numbers 13 is one of the most useful chapters in the Torah for anybody who has ever had to assess their own life. Twelve leaders, one from every tribe, sent up through the Negev into the hill country with a list of questions: is the land good or bad, are the people strong or weak, are the cities walled, is there wood, bring back some of the fruit.

They did the job properly. They went the whole way to Rehob and Hamath. They were gone six weeks. And at the brook of Eshcol they cut down one cluster of grapes and it took two of them to carry it on a staff between them.

Hold that image, because it is the physical evidence and it never gets disputed. One bunch of grapes so heavy it needed two men and a pole.

Then they come back, and they stand in front of the whole congregation, and the first thing out of their mouths is true: Surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.

And then, verse twenty eight, one word: Nevertheless.

Everything changes at that word. Nevertheless the people be strong, and the cities are walled and very great, and the children of Anak are there. All of which is also true. Nobody in this chapter is lying about the facts.

Caleb did not argue with the giants

Watch what happens next, because it is not a debate about data.

And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.Numbers 13:30, King James Version

He does not say the cities are small. He does not say there are no giants. He never once disputes a single observation the other ten made, because they were accurate. He adds one thing they left out, and the one thing is the size of God against the size of the wall.

And then the ten answer, and in verse thirty three they say the sentence that gives the whole thing away: we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Read that twice. In our own sight first. Then, and so, in theirs. They decided what they were, and then they told you what the giants thought about it, and they had never spoken to a single giant. They surveyed a country and reported their own self image back as though it were terrain.

You went and looked at your situation and came back with the ten men's report. Numbers 13:33 has them measuring themselves before they measure anything else, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that order visible in a survey written at two in the morning.

I know it, because the walls are all listed. They are numbered. You could tell me the exact reason each one is not going to move, and every reason is factually correct, and you have been repeating them to yourself at two in the morning like a man reciting a survey.

But the grapes got left at the door.

You have something from the last three months that was good and real and heavy enough to need two people to carry, and it never made it into the account. Numbers 13:23 has them cutting one cluster and carrying it between two on a staff, and that item is in the written report, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps putting it back in front of a person. That is not optimism. That is a missing line in an inventory.

You are well able, now, standing here with the survey still in your hand. Numbers 13:30 says we are well able while every wall in the report is still standing, and ability in this chapter was never a measurement of the walls, and God has not asked anybody to be bigger than what they looked at.

And here is the part that ought to sober all of us. The ten were not cowards in the ordinary sense. They walked into that land. They went the whole distance. They carried the fruit back on their own shoulders. It is possible to do every brave thing and still come home with a grasshopper's report, and the difference between Caleb and the ten was not courage. It was what they had in view when they measured themselves.

You have been doing the brave things the whole time, and that was never the item in question. Numbers 13:23 has all twelve of them carrying the same fruit the same distance, and the same Spirit who kept that detail is the reason your effort has never been what was under review.

You are not a grasshopper, and nobody in that land ever said so. Numbers 13:33 has them saying it about themselves first and then reporting it as though the giants had said it, and His Spirit has been contradicting that sentence every time it nearly gets believed.

One more thing, and it is the cost. Caleb held that report for forty five years before he ever set foot in the land. He was eighty five when he asked for his mountain. Being right did not make it fast.