Numbers 13:1-5: in context

The LORD tells Moses to send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which, he says, I am giving to the children of Israel. One leader is chosen from each tribe, all of them heads of the people, and Moses sends them out from the wilderness. The passage lists their names, tribe by tribe. The reconnaissance is about to begin that will lead to one of Israel's great failures, when ten of the twelve return with a fearful report and turn the people back from the land God had promised.

A single phrase in God's instruction is worth catching before the story unfolds: spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel. Before the spies set out, before they see a single obstacle, God has already called it the land I am giving you. The promise is settled; the gift is already granted. The mission is not to determine whether God's promise is reliable, or whether the land is worth taking, but to prepare for a conquest God has already declared certain. And yet, as the story will show, ten of the twelve would return having let what they saw override what God had said. They saw the fortified cities and the giants, and read the facts through their fear rather than through the promise, concluding that the land could not be taken, as though God had not already said he was giving it. That is the tragedy this passage sets up, and it holds a warning for us. God's promises are often settled before we face the obstacles; the land is given before we scout it. But when we go and see the difficulties, the giants in the way, the fortified cities of our own fears, we are tempted, like the ten, to let the facts we see override the word God has spoken, to conclude from the obstacles that his promise cannot hold. The two ways of seeing are set against each other from the start: to see the land through the promise, as God's already-given gift, or to see it through our fear, as an impossible obstacle. What we let govern our sight, the promise or the fear, will decide whether we go up or turn back.

When I face the obstacles between me and what God has promised, the giants and fortified cities of my fears, do I let what I see override what God has said, like the ten spies, or do I see the difficulty through the promise, as ground God has already declared he is giving?