The Reasonable Sin of Unbelief Text: Deuteronomy 1:22-25
Introduction: The Camouflage of Common Sense
We are in the middle of Moses’ great sermon on the plains of Moab. He is recounting for the new generation the history of their fathers' failures, so that they might not repeat them. And the central failure, the great apostasy in the wilderness that defined that entire generation, was the incident at Kadesh Barnea. It was the moment they stood at the threshold of the Promised Land, looked in, and then refused to enter. It was a catastrophic failure of faith.
But we must pay close attention to how this failure began. Great rebellions rarely begin with a defiant roar. They almost always begin with a reasonable-sounding suggestion. The seed of this national disaster was not a proposal to go back to Egypt, not yet. It was not a proposal to build another golden calf. The seed of this rebellion was a motion from the floor that sounded like strategic wisdom. It sounded like prudence. It sounded like common sense. And that is what made it so deadly.
Our age worships at the altar of pragmatism and data. We believe that if we can just gather enough information, run enough scenarios, and poll enough experts, we can mitigate all risk. We want to walk by sight, but we want to baptize it and call it responsible planning. The proposal of the people here in Deuteronomy is the ancient equivalent of forming a committee. God had given them a command, clear and direct: "Go up, take possession" (v. 21). But the people replied, in effect, "An excellent idea, Lord. But before we act on your command, we would like to form a subcommittee to conduct a feasibility study."
This is the nature of pious unbelief. It doesn't reject God's command outright. It simply wants to add a human verification step. It wants to put God's promise on probation until our due diligence is complete. And as we will see, even a good leader like Moses can get swept up in the apparent wisdom of such a plan. This passage is a sober warning to us. The most dangerous temptations are not those that look wicked, but those that look wise.
The Text
Then all of you came near to me and said, 'Let us send men before us, that they may search out the land for us and bring back to us word of the way by which we should go up and the cities which we shall enter.' And the thing was good in my sight, and I took twelve of your men, one man for each tribe. Then they turned and went up into the hill country and came to the valley of Eshcol and spied it out. Then they took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us; and they brought word back to us and said, 'It is a good land which Yahweh our God is about to give us.'
(Deuteronomy 1:22-25 LSB)
A Popular and Plausible Proposal (v. 22)
The story of the great failure begins with a unanimous suggestion from the people.
"Then all of you came near to me and said, 'Let us send men before us, that they may search out the land for us and bring back to us word of the way by which we should go up and the cities which we shall enter.'" (Deuteronomy 1:22 LSB)
Notice the source of the initiative: "all of you." This was not the idea of a few malcontents. This was a popular, democratic movement. The entire congregation was behind it. This should immediately put us on guard. The consensus of the crowd is a notoriously unreliable guide to the will of God. The same kind of crowd that shouted "Hosanna" on Sunday shouted "Crucify Him" on Friday. Here, the unified voice of the people is the voice of hesitation, not faith.
Their request sounds entirely reasonable. It is a classic military reconnaissance mission. "Let us send men before us." Why? To gather intelligence. They wanted two pieces of information: the best route to take ("the way by which we should go up") and the nature of the opposition ("the cities which we shall enter"). From a purely human standpoint, this is what any competent general would do. You don't invade a country blind.
But they were not operating from a purely human standpoint. They had a commander-in-chief who had already scouted the territory. God had already given them the report. He said, "See, I have set the land before you" (Deut. 1:8). He said, "It is a good land" (Deut. 1:25). Their request for their own spies was a subtle vote of no-confidence in God's intelligence report. God had told them what to do: go and possess. He would be in charge of the how. Their desire to know the "way" and the "cities" in advance was an attempt to take the "how" out of God's hands and put it into their own. It was a desire for a level of control and predictability that faith never offers. Faith is required to trust the Guide, not to have the entire map in your hands before you take the first step.
A Fateful Concession (v. 23)
The people's proposal was a test, not just for them, but for their leader.
"And the thing was good in my sight, and I took twelve of your men, one man for each tribe." (Deuteronomy 1:23 LSB)
Here is one of the tragic verses in the Pentateuch. Moses says, "the thing was good in my sight." He agreed to it. The great lawgiver, the man who spoke with God face to face, was persuaded by the apparent reasonableness of the people's request. Why would he do this? Perhaps he thought it would be a good way to build their confidence. "Let them see for themselves, and then their faith will be strengthened." But you cannot strengthen faith by catering to unbelief. You cannot build trust in God by first trusting in human intelligence.
This is a profound lesson for all leaders, whether in the home, the church, or the state. The pressure to compromise, to find a middle way between bold, naked faith and cautious, worldly pragmatism, is immense. The request seemed good. It was a small concession. But it granted the central premise of their unbelief: that God's word required human verification. By agreeing to the mission, Moses inadvertently validated their fear. He was accommodating their weakness, but in a way that would feed it, not starve it. God, in His sovereignty, allows this. He condescends to their plan. He will let them send their spies. But He will also let them bear the full consequences of the unbelief that prompted it.
A Successful Mission (v. 24-25a)
The plan is put into action, and from a technical standpoint, it is a complete success.
"Then they turned and went up into the hill country and came to the valley of Eshcol and spied it out. Then they took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us..." (Deuteronomy 1:24-25a LSB)
The twelve men, one from each tribe, were capable. They did exactly what they were sent to do. They went up, they penetrated deep into the land, they reached the valley of Eshcol, which means "cluster," and they gathered evidence. The mission was executed flawlessly. They were good spies.
And what did they find? They found fruit. The book of Numbers tells us it was a cluster of grapes so large it had to be carried on a pole between two men, along with pomegranates and figs (Numbers 13:23). They brought back tangible, empirical, undeniable proof that God had been telling the truth. The land was not just good; it was supernaturally, unbelievably good. The evidence was not ambiguous. It was sitting right there, in their hands, dripping with juice.
This is a critical point. The failure that is about to happen is not because the evidence was lacking. It is not because the report was unclear. The facts on the ground perfectly aligned with the promise from heaven. Unbelief is rarely a problem of insufficient information. It is a problem of a corrupt heart that reinterprets all information, no matter how glorious, through the grid of fear and self-preservation.
The Good Report (v. 25b)
The mission concludes with the initial, unanimous verdict. And the verdict is positive.
"...and they brought word back to us and said, 'It is a good land which Yahweh our God is about to give us.'" (Deuteronomy 1:25b LSB)
Here it is. The official finding of the feasibility study. All twelve spies agreed on this point. The ten who would later give the evil report and the two who would give the good report all started from the same baseline of facts: "It is a good land." They all acknowledged that it was a gift from God: "which Yahweh our God is about to give us."
So where did it all go wrong? It went wrong in the next word, which is not recorded here in Deuteronomy but is infamous from the account in Numbers. The word is "but." "It is a good land... but the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large" (Numbers 13:28). The facts were not the problem. The "but" was the problem. The "but" was the pivot point where faith died and fear took over.
The ten spies looked at the good land and the big giants and concluded that the giants were bigger than God. Joshua and Caleb looked at the good land and the big giants and concluded that God was bigger than the giants. The evidence was the same. The interpretation was radically different. The majority report focused on the obstacles. The minority report focused on the God who makes promises. The ten saw the fruit and the giants and said, "We can't." Joshua and Caleb saw the fruit and the giants and said, "God can."
Conclusion: Believing the True Report
This story is our story. God has given us a promise of a new creation, a heavenly country. He has given us a command, the Great Commission, to go up and possess the land in the name of His Son. And He has sent a true and faithful spy ahead of us, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus went up into the hill country of Golgotha. He spied out the land of death and the grave. And on the third day, He came back. He brought back the "fruit" from that far country, the fruit of His own resurrection, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Cor. 15:20). He is the tangible proof that the land is good and that victory is assured.
And He has brought back a report. His report is not, "The land is good, but the enemies are strong." His report is, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore..." (Matthew 28:18-19). His report is, "It is finished" (John 19:30).
The world, the flesh, and the devil will always give us a majority report. They will show us the giants of secularism, the fortified cities of sin, the overwhelming odds. They will always counsel cautious retreat masquerading as wisdom. They will always say, "Yes, the promises are nice, but..."
The question for the church in every generation is this: which report will we believe? Will we believe the unanimous, popular, reasonable-sounding report of fear? Or will we believe the report of our risen Joshua, who has already conquered our strongest enemies and invites us to walk in His victory? Let us not be like that faithless generation who had the fruit in their hands and still refused to enter. We have the testimony of a risen Savior. Let us therefore go up at once and possess the land, for we are well able to overcome it by His strength.