Friends, we are back to our study in the scriptures. Today I want to ask a question, a very important one: How Big is Your GOD? Our text is taken from:

Numbers 13:1-3, 26-33

¹And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel; from each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a leader among them.”

³ So Moses sent them from the Wilderness of Paran according to the command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the children of Israel.

²⁶ Now they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. ²⁷ Then they told him, and said: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. ²⁸ Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there. ²⁹ The Amalekites dwell in the land of the South; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.”

³⁰ Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”

³¹ But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” ³² And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. ³³ There we saw the giants^[d] (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

How Big is your GOD?

PRAYER:

Father, we devote this moment to You, and ask for Your blessing as we hear Your Word. Holy Spirit, may You speak to the hearts of all who are with me, in Jesus Name. Amen!

Our text demonstrates the relationship between perception and action. What you become conscious of through the senses affects what you do or do not do. According to the English dictionary, perception is the ability to become aware of something through the senses, or the process of becoming aware of something through the senses. And the senses in question are the senses of touch, sight, taste, smell and hearing. These are the senses that inform most people’s perception. By the sense of touch, for example, you would say, ‘Ah this is a hot object’. You perceive that this is a hot object because you touched it. By the sense of sight you perceive that that is a tree and not a human being standing there. These senses help us to perceive. But I want to submit to you that there is another sense that also helps us to perceive, a different kind of sense; and it is the sixth sense, if you please. And this sixth sense is called faith. This is the most important of all the senses. And this sense of faith helps us to perceive   GOD. Perception and action are closely related to each other.

The weakling stops running from the bully the moment he, the weakling, is in the presence of someone he perceives to be stronger than the bully. A little child does not entertain any fear when he is in the presence of his father. Almost all children perceive their fathers as giants.

I remember when my son was small. He used to brag that his father was a giant. And the father that was a giant was only 5 /6.

Perception and action!

Our text is an account of two groups of Israelites who had the same GOD and the same problem. But there was one difference between them. The difference was that of perception: their respective perceptions of God which affected their perception of themselves and the enemies they needed to overcome. Ten of them had the wrong perception of God. And this wrong perception they had of GOD. the GOD of Israel was no longer big in their sight. That affected the way they saw their enemies. It magnified their enemies and diminished them; while two had the correct perception of GOD that tended to cut their enemies down to size.

Let me start by tracing what I call the root of the problem. And I said that the root of the problem is in the unnecessary mission they embarked on. The mission we find in Numbers 13:1-3. Moses had sent twelve representatives of Israel, leaders of the various tribes, on a mission to spy out the land. This mission, I said, was unnecessary. But you would say butt the texts says it was GOD who commanded Moses to send them. May I remind you what someone has observed, that the best commentary on the bible is the bible. When we compare scripture with scripture we get a more accurate understanding of what the scripture is saying. We find that it was not GOD’s idea to send the spies, in the first place, because GOD had led them to the edge of the Promised Land. And all they needed to do was to go in and possess it. But this idea of spies, how did it come up? It was the idea of the children of Israel, and Moses agreed with them. It is the case of loss of confidence in GOD on the part of Israel, recalling what happened at this point earlier in their wilderness journey. Recalling this later on in Deuteronomy chapter 1 we see the clearer picture.

Deuteronomy 1:20

²⁰ And I said to you, ‘You have come to the mountains of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is giving us. ²¹ Look, the Lord your God has set the land before you; go up and possess it, as the Lord God of your fathers has spoken to you; do not fear or be discouraged.’

²² “And every one of you came near to me and said, ‘Let us send men before us, and let them search out the land for us, and bring back word to us of the way by which we should go up, and of the cities into which we shall come.’

²³ “The plan pleased me well; so I took twelve of your men, one man from each tribe. ²⁴ And they departed and went up into the mountains, and came to the Valley of Eshcol, and spied it out.

This is the account that Moses is giving hear in Deuteronomy 1:20-24 of what happened, the time they came to the edge of the Promised Land. It was not GOD – it wasn’t GOD who sent them. It was the people who insisted that they spy out the land. So what we are seeing here is an incident of, or what we may call GOD’S permissive will, which is not the will of GOD at all. GOD’s permissive will is GOD permitting the will of man to be done when man insists on doing his will. That is what happened. And when GOD permits you to do your will the result is never good. The root of the problem Israel had with GOD was the unnecessary mission to spy out the land and the wrong perception of GOD on the part of the majority of the spy which worsened the matter.

Let’s go to the second point I want to make. The wrong perception of the ten men wasn’t the problem of Israel. We read in Numbers 13:26-28

²⁶ Now they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. ²⁷ Then they told him, and said: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit [the evidence]. ²⁸ Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there.

But Caleb and Joshua had a different perception. Caleb tried to counter the negative report based on a more accurate perception of GOD.

Verse 30

³⁰ Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”

But you see, if we look further you find that these men were not done with diminishing their GOD and diminishing themselves because they continued to argue; and in fact they said that the land they went to spy was a land that devours its inhabitants, and that all the people they saw were of great stature.

Friend, it is good to have the right perception of GOD. It is good to trust GOD, because when you see GOD for who He is….the big GOD, your problems will become smaller. But if you see your problem bigger than GOD, then you will be like the children of Israel. You may miss out on the blessing that GOD has for you.

PRAYER:

Faithful Father, thank You so much for Your Word. I pray for my friends. I pray dear GOD, that those who have the wrong perception of You You will correct the perception, that they see You as You are; and in the light of the problems they have in this life will be cut down to the right size. Thank You, Father, we pray in the Name of Jesus. Amen!