The Optics of Unbelief Text: Numbers 13:25-33
Introduction: Two Irreconcilable Reports
We come now to one of the great pivot points in the history of Israel, a moment of catastrophic failure at Kadesh Barnea. This is not simply a historical account of a failed military expedition. It is a profound theological lesson on the nature of faith and unbelief. The choice presented to Israel here is the same choice presented to every generation of God's people. It is the choice between God's promise and man's perception. It is the choice between walking by faith and walking by sight. And we must be clear: these are two mutually exclusive ways of life. You cannot do both.
The spies have returned after forty days in the land. They all saw the same things. They saw the same fortified cities, the same powerful inhabitants, and the same enormous clusters of grapes. The facts on the ground were not in dispute. But they returned with two entirely different, irreconcilable reports. Ten spies delivered a report filtered through the lens of unbelief, and two spies delivered a report filtered through the lens of faith. The majority report was an exercise in what we might call carnal accounting. They added up the obstacles, calculated the risks, and concluded that the liabilities far outweighed the assets. The minority report, from Caleb and Joshua, was an exercise in covenantal accounting. They saw the same obstacles, but they factored in one variable that the other ten completely ignored: the promise and power of Almighty God.
This is the fundamental conflict of worldviews. The secularist, the materialist, the unbeliever, looks at the world and sees only what is visible. He sees giants and walls. The believer looks at the same world and sees the invisible God who reigns over all giants and all walls. The crisis at Kadesh Barnea was not a crisis of military intelligence; it was a crisis of theology. The question was not "Are the Canaanites strong?" The question was "Is Yahweh stronger?" The ten spies answered with a resounding "No." Caleb answered with a resounding "Yes." And the answer that a people gives to that question determines their entire destiny.
This passage is a stark warning to the church in every age. We are constantly tempted to adopt the methodology of the ten spies. We look at the cultural giants, the fortified cities of secularism, the overwhelming opposition, and we conclude that the task of taking the land for Christ is impossible. We start talking like grasshoppers. But God has not called us to be grasshoppers. He has called us to be giant-killers. And He does this by calling us to believe His Word, regardless of what our eyes tell us.
The Text
Then they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days, and went and came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; and they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Thus they recounted to him and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.”
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we are surely able to overcome it.” But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.” So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land, which we have passed through to spy out on, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
(Numbers 13:25-33 LSB)
The Majority Report: Faithless Empiricism (vv. 25-29)
We begin with the return of the spies and the presentation of their findings.
"Then they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days... and showed them the fruit of the land. Thus they recounted to him and said, 'We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.'" (Numbers 13:25-27)
The report begins with a confirmation of God's promise. The land is indeed as good as God said it was. They have the evidence in their hands, a cluster of grapes so large it had to be carried on a pole between two men. This is tangible proof of the goodness of God and the desirability of the inheritance. Unbelief is not a lack of evidence. Unbelief is a refusal to draw the right conclusion from the evidence. They have a taste of the promise, but they will choke on it.
Notice the structure of their report. It follows the classic pattern of faithless compromise: "Yes, but..." or in this case, "Certainly... Nevertheless." This is the language of a divided heart. "Yes, God's promise is wonderful, the land is fruitful... nevertheless, the obstacles are too great." This "nevertheless" is the hinge upon which their entire destiny swings. It is the word that cancels out the promise. Whenever you hear a Christian say, "I believe the Bible, but..." you are standing on the brink of Kadesh Barnea.
"Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there." (Numbers 13:28)
Here is the heart of their unbelief. They are practicing a form of empirical analysis that leaves God entirely out of the equation. They list three obstacles: strong people, fortified cities, and giants. From a purely human standpoint, their assessment was accurate. The Canaanites were not going to hand over their land without a fight. But Israel was not supposed to be operating from a purely human standpoint. They had seen God part the Red Sea. They had seen Him destroy the entire Egyptian army. They were being fed daily by bread from heaven. Their entire existence as a people was a testimony to the fact that God specializes in overcoming impossible odds. But at the first sign of real opposition, they suffer from a catastrophic case of spiritual amnesia.
They mention the "descendants of Anak." These were a race of famously tall and formidable people, giants. This is not just a military assessment; it is a trigger for primal fear. They are not just reporting facts; they are stoking terror. And they continue their detailed, God-less intelligence report in the next verse, listing all the various "-ites" that occupy the land. It is a meticulous catalogue of obstacles, designed to overwhelm and intimidate. This is what unbelief does. It magnifies the opposition and minimizes God.
The Minority Report: The Logic of Faith (v. 30)
Into this rising tide of fear and cowardice, Caleb speaks a word of defiant faith.
"Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, 'We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we are surely able to overcome it.'" (Numbers 13:30 LSB)
Caleb does not dispute the facts. He doesn't say, "The cities aren't really that fortified," or "The Anakim are shorter than they look." Faith does not deny reality; it interprets reality in the light of God's character and promises. Caleb's logic is simple and profound. His conclusion, "we are surely able to overcome it," is not based on an assessment of Israel's strength. It is based on an assessment of God's strength. His "for" is a theological "for." We are able because He is able.
This is the essence of a biblical worldview. It is presuppositional. Caleb begins with the axiom that God keeps His promises. God promised them the land. Therefore, any obstacle, no matter how formidable, is irrelevant to the final outcome. The giants are just details. The fortified cities are just scenery. The only thing that matters is the Word of the living God. Caleb's statement is a rebuke to the pragmatic, risk-assessment cowardice of the other spies. He is not being reckless; they are being faithless. He is the true realist in the story, because he is the only one taking all of reality, including the reality of God, into account.
The Slander of Unbelief (vv. 31-33)
The ten spies cannot let Caleb's word of faith stand. They must double down on their fear-mongering. And in doing so, their report degenerates from a bad assessment into an outright slander against God and His land.
"But the men who had gone up with him said, 'We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.'" (Numbers 13:31 LSB)
Notice the contrast. Caleb said, "We are surely able." They say, "We are not able." This is the fundamental divide. But look at their reasoning: "for they are too strong for us." Who is the "us" in that sentence? It is Israel, alone. They have completely forgotten that the Lord is with them. They have reduced the conflict to a simple equation of Canaanite strength versus Israelite strength. And in that equation, they are correct. They would lose. But they are using the wrong math. The true equation was Canaanite strength versus Israelite strength plus Almighty God. And in that equation, the Canaanites were hopelessly outmatched.
Their unbelief now curdles into malicious falsehood. They don't just give a bad report; they give an evil report.
"So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, 'The land, which we have passed through to spy out on, is a land that devours its inhabitants...'" (Numbers 13:32 LSB)
This is a grotesque lie. They had just returned with evidence of the land's incredible fruitfulness. Now they claim it "devours its inhabitants." This is the slander of a faithless heart. When you refuse to believe God's promise, you must eventually start lying about the promise itself to justify your unbelief. You have to paint God's good gift as something monstrous and deadly. We see this today. People reject God's good gift of marriage between a man and a woman, and to justify their rebellion, they must slander it as oppressive and toxic. They reject God's moral law, and so they must portray it as a soul-crushing burden. Unbelief always leads to slander.
And then comes the infamous conclusion, the very definition of a defeated mindset.
"There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight." (Numbers 13:33 LSB)
They bring up the Nephilim, invoking the memory of the mighty men of old from Genesis 6. This is a strategic move, designed to evoke maximum terror. These are not just giants; they are the semi-divine, monstrous offspring of ancient rebellion. But the most damning part of their confession is the "grasshopper" comparison. Notice the sequence. First, "we became like grasshoppers in our own sight." Their distorted self-perception came first. They saw themselves as small, weak, and insignificant. Their unbelief had already shrunk them down to insect size in their own minds. And only then did they project that view onto the enemy: "and so we were in their sight." How did they know what the Anakim thought of them? They didn't. They were assuming the enemy saw them with the same contempt with which they saw themselves. This is the optics of unbelief. It begins with a low view of oneself because it has a low view of God, and it ends by imagining that everyone else, including your enemies, sees you as the pathetic creature you believe yourself to be.
Conclusion: The Grasshopper Gospel
The tragedy of Kadesh Barnea is that the people of Israel bought the grasshopper report. They chose to believe the ten faithless men over the two faithful men, and more importantly, over the faithful God. And that unbelief cost them everything. That entire generation, save two, would die in the wilderness, never entering the inheritance God had prepared for them.
The lesson for us is stark and unavoidable. The Church in the West today is riddled with a grasshopper mentality. We have listened to the bad reports. We look at the giants of secular humanism, the fortified cities of woke ideology, and the armies of the alphabet soup agenda, and we have concluded that they are too strong for us. We have become like grasshoppers in our own sight. We have adopted a theology of retreat, of cultural surrender, of managed decline. We preach a small gospel for a small God, hoping only to rescue a few souls from the wreckage before the whole thing burns down.
But Caleb's report is still on the table. The promise of God has not been rescinded. Jesus Christ has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. He has commanded us to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything He has commanded. This is our land grant. The giants are real. The cities are fortified. But our God is the Lord of Hosts. The battle belongs to Him.
The choice before us is the same one that faced Israel at Kadesh. Will we believe the bad report of our own fears and perceptions? Or will we, like Caleb, quiet the noise of unbelief and say, "We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we are surely able to overcome it"? Will we see ourselves as grasshoppers, destined to be crushed? Or will we see our enemies as bread, destined to be consumed by the people of God as we advance in the power of His might? The answer we give will determine whether we wander in a wilderness of our own making or enter into the victory that Christ has already won.