You’d like to have a better job, but the training will cost a lot of time and money. You’d like to marry a certain someone, but you’re scared of being rejected. You’d really like that knee to stop hurting all the time, but you know the surgery and rehab will be even more painful, at least in the short run. In this life, the best things don’t come easily, do they?

That was certainly the case for the spies whom Moses had sent into the Promised Land. He had told them to find out everything they could about the people: how many there were, how well they could protect themselves, and what kind of cities they were living in. He also wanted to know about the land itself – whether there were trees, what kind of crops were produced, and how abundantly.

Well, they brought back lots of evidence of the land’s fertility – pomegranates and figs to show what kinds of trees grew there, alone with a single cluster of grapes that was so big it took two of them to carry it on a pole stretched between them. But they also discovered that there were lots of people already living in the land, and some of them were very tall and strong (the descendants of Anak). In short, they discovered that if this land would not be easy to conquer, it would be well worth the effort.

But this was not just supposed to be an exercise in cost-benefit analysis for the Israelites. For remember Whose idea this journey of exploration was: God Himself. Back in verse 2, God had told Moses, “Send out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel.”

In other words, God wanted His people to see the blessings He was giving them, as well as the dangers from which He would protect them. But they were to look at all this information through the lens of confident trust in God – no matter how difficult it might seem, He would give them the great blessing He had promised to them. In other words, the only reason God wanted them to see the giants in the land was so they could give Him more praise for overcoming them.

So, the question for them is the same one that we face when we look at our lives as a whole: are we going to be disappointed when things are not perfect in this life? Are we going to allow our fears of difficulties and setbacks to keep us away from the blessings God has promised us? Or will we press forward, trusting in God, confident of His provision and protection, sure that He will help us overcome anything that might keep us from pursuing the greatest blessing of all – His perfect will for our lives?

Numbers 13:17-24 (NAS)

17 When Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, he said to them, “Go up there into the Negev; then go up into the hill country.
18 “And see what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many.
19 “And how is the land in which they live, is it good or bad? And how are the cities in which they live, are they like open camps or with fortifications?
20 “And how is the land, is it fat or lean? Are there trees in it or not? Make an effort then to get some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.
21 So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, at Lebo-hamath.
22 When they had gone up into the Negev, they came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)
23 Then they came to the valley of Eshcol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes; and they carried it on a pole between two men, with some of the pomegranates and the figs.
24 That place was called the valley of Eshcol, because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut down from there.