Faith or Fear Num. 13:1-33 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

In this sermon we are going to look at the 12 spies being sent into the land of Canaan. As you well know two spies gave a good report and ten spies gave an evil report. For the sake of this sermon we are going to look at Caleb and what his report was to get a lesson for us today in having the spirit of power, love and a sound mind instead of the spirit of fear.

First we must look at the original promise that God had given to Moses concerning the land.

1)  It was a promise land full of promise (Exodus 3:8)

2)  God had promised to drive out the inhabitants of the land as well (Exodus 33:1-17)

Note that when the spies returned from the promised land that they had the fruit with them and showed it to the children of Israel (Numbers 13:20,26). This is what is really something they had the evidence of the promise of God being fulfilled in their hands and still did not want to go into the promise land.

We do the same thing today. We have the fruit of God’s word in our hands and we are still hesitant to do what it says.

The Fruit of Fear :

Note that there fear was based on a problem with perception. Most of our fear is a perception problem also. This is shown to us in Numbers 13:33.

Many times we are scared or hung up on what we think others think about us. Remember this quote, “we are not what we think we are, we are not what others think we are, we are what we think others think we are” If the truth was known most people very little time think about us anyway because they are too busy thinking about themselves.

The main fruit of fear in this case was that the children of Israel wasted the next 40 years in the wilderness and then died. How many saved born again children of God have wasted many years and done nothing for God because of fear?

Caleb had another spirit :

When we look at Numbers chapter 14 and see God giving out the punishment for Israel wanting to follow the 10 spies that gave the evil report we see an interesting verse in regards to Caleb.

Numbers 14:24 (Caleb has another spirit in with him)

This reminds us of the verse for us in 2Timothy 1:7.We are to have the spirit of power, love and a sound mind and not the spirit of fear. When we compare this with Caleb’s statement in Numbers 13:30 we see the same thing.

1)  Power – “we are able to overcome it”

• Caleb was trusting the word of God and the power of his might (Daniel 3:17 ; Ephesians 3:20 ; Ephesians 6:10)

2)  Love – “let us go up at once”

• He we see his passion and ergency (2 Corinthians 5:14 ; Galatians 5:6)

3)  Sound mind – “Caleb stilled the people”

• Peace is directly connected to faith (Romans 5:1 ; Philippians 4:7)

Fruit of Faith :

In Numbers 13:30 Caleb said “and posses it”. We do not see Caleb getting to posses the land until the book of Joshua 14:7-12. It was 45 years after he had spied out the land.

Note that in Joshua that Caleb is still trusting that if God will be with him that he can conquer the land that God had promised to him.

You might not do great and mighty things in the eyes of man but if you will be faithful to what God ask you to do and not let fear paralyze you from action then you can posses the promises that God has for you. Will you have the fruit of fear or the fruit of faith? It is up to you.