I was at church this morning listening to my Pastor teach, when he mentioned a story from the book of Numbers chapter 13. In there you will find the story of Moses sending the twelve spies to go in and check out the land that God had promised to the children of Israel. When he said that the Lord told Moses to choose out one man from each of the tribes to send, something went off on the inside of me, and I'd like to share it with you.
Take a look at Numbers 13:1 - 3: The Lord now said to Moses, "Send out men to explore the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to the Israelites. Send one leader from each of the twelve ancestral tribes." So Moses did as the Lord commanded him. He sent out twelve men, all tribal leaders of Israel, from their camp in the wilderness of Paran.
If you know the rest of the story, the twelve men spent 40 days spying out the land and found that it was indeed a great place, and everything that the Lord had said it would be. The thing that jumped out at me this morning was the fact that each of these men were leaders. They were not your run of the mill guys, they were leaders of their tribes, and when they returned they reported to Moses about how the land was as great as God had said. They had great things to say about the land, yet, that was not where ten of the men's focus was directed.
If you look at verse 28 you will see what the ten were actually focusing on. Numbers 13:28: But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak! Back in verse 22 it said: Going north, they passed through the Negev and arrived at Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai - all descendants of Anak lived. (The ancient town of Hebron was founded seven years before the Egyptian city of Zoan).
That last part in parentheses is interesting to me because Abraham (the father of the Israelites) had lived there and probably knew some of the descendants of Anak. This is important to me, because they are stating a fact, but one that really is irrelevant to their report because I'm pretty sure they had heard stories about father Abraham living in Hebron. In other words the descendants of Anak were not unknown to them, nor was this a pertinent fact. Instead of focusing on the goodness of God and what He had for them, ten of the twelve spies chose to focus on the challenges before them.
The stories in the Bible were given to us as examples for us to learn from. What most people miss is how this and other stories relate to their walk as a Christian (myself included). Let me ask you, are you a leader? Before you answer no, let me assure you that you are. Oh, you may not run a church, or a fortune 500 company, but each one of us is leading someone, if it is only to conclusions. Our lives are on display, and the things that we do and say matter. People are watching us to see how we will react, and what we will do when the challenges of life arrive. Just like the millions of Israelite people were watching those twelve leaders to see how they would react. When the ten said that the promised land was not attainable, the masses followed their word instead of God's.
Life is full of ups and downs, and victories and defeats but it is in our attitude where God works miracles. I heard it said one time that we don't have to take care of supernatural, that's God's department. All we have to do is the natural part, and God will take care of the rest. What happened in this story is the leaders forgot the supernatural that God had already done for them, and focused solely on the natural. Their "buts" got in the way. How about you? Are you spending more time focusing on the buts in life or on the God who overlooks the buts and leads us to victory?
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