Sunday 27th August
Read Numbers 13:30-33
“Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, ‘We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.’
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.’ 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, ‘The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.’” (NIVUK)
How frequently do you forget exactly who God is? Caleb has not forgotten. It is not a merely human boast of skill and strength when he declares that ‘we can certainly do it’ – it is a statement of faith in the God who is with them.
But his peers don’t hold such a high view of God. The people in the land were enormous and powerful. But the next step, the one Caleb took, was to remember that God was infinitely more powerful. But they did not take that step. They felt like grasshoppers. They felt small and powerless and insignificant. They were terrified. They had completely lost perspective. Or rather, they were only seeing things from a human perspective. They view from below looking up was indeed terrifying.
But God is so much more powerful than giants (a lesson exemplified by David and Goliath). Is there something you are facing now where a change of perspective is needed?
