Home  > Short Studies  > Faith over fear (Num 13:25-14:24)

Sometimes when we are confronted with difficulty, fear keeps us from doing what we know we should. As Christians we understand that our God is sovereign over all things, and we strive to consider everything we face from the perspective of how He intends it. This is not always easy to do though, because the ways of His providence in our lives are not always apparent and clearly understood. Still, we know He continually directs our lives and because of that we often do recognize the doors He opens and the paths He lays out for us. Many times these paths are made very obvious, and even though they may involve difficulty or risk, we are obliged to go forward in faith to the fulfilment of His will.

Numbers 13 describes the preparations of the Israelites towards taking possession of the land of Canaan. After Moses had sent spies to scout it out and assess the strengths and weaknesses of its inhabitants, a variety of sobering reports returned. Certainly the land was bountiful, but the people they were to displace appeared very strong, their cities fortified, and doubts began to surface among the Israelites as to whether or not God would deliver this land to them as He had promised.

Amid this mood of uncertainty Caleb, one of the spies who had scouted the land, quieted the people and said “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.” Other spies, fearful and convinced of defeat, argued that the inhabitants were too big and strong and Israel would surely be unable to oppose them, which created a great crisis in the camp. The people wailed and lamented that God had seemingly brought them across the wilderness only to destroy them, and started to second-guess whether or not they should have left Egypt in the first place.

This giant lack of trust in the Lord despite continuous, obvious evidence of His providential care was a great discouragement to Moses, but he petitioned God not to wipe them out on the spot for their faithlessness and disobedience. God pardoned them, but He also decreed that the present faithless generation would die off before Israel would ever inherit the promised land. Caleb and his family though, because of the faith he demonstrated, lived to eventually enter and claim the inheritance.

The disobedient generation of Israel caved to fear and gave up what God had promised them because they had no faith, despite having witnessed His hand at work on their behalf time and time again. They placed their trust not in the Almighty God, but in the apparent strength of the Canaanites they surely believed would rout them despite the Lord’s promise to the contrary.

Fear can cause us to abandon faith and logically convince ourselves to give up or seek alternatives to what God intends for us to do. Difficult circumstances can certainly be a challenge to faith, but we must remember that the testing of our faith produces perseverance. As the faithful, we are not to submit to fear because we have the assurance that God is with us. We must strive to recognize His guiding hand at work in our lives, know when He is directing our path, and always put more faith in Him than the things we fear.

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Most scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB)

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