“...we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them."
(Numbers 13:33)
When I was a young boy I stumbled across a scary movie one night and of course watched it. It was an old black and white science-fiction movie with these giant radioactive grasshoppers that were attacking the country and the military was blasting away at them with all they had. Bazookas, hand-grenades, machine guns, flamethrowers and tanks and they still couldn't stop them. I mean these things were huge 3 times the size of the tanks. That movie scared me to death. I know the effects were terrible, but big, fast insects that eat people, scare me. They are what I thought of as I read through Number 13 and the Israelite's first chance to enter the promised land as they sent in the 12 spies to checkout the land.
After 40 days of spying the 12 return. Two gave a good report and ten gave a bad one. Caleb and Joshua are all for going in, they knew that God did not lead them that far to fail them. But the ten looked at it differently. They saw their problem as bigger than them, they saw it as overwhelming and they saw no way to win. They went as far as saying that there were giants in the land and in their own eyes, they saw themselves as grasshoppers before them.
First, I'm not too sure that the people were actual giants. The Bible does say that they gave a “bad report”. They also said that they saw the sons of Anak in that land and that they were descended from the Nephilim. If I'm not mistaken the Nephilim were pre-flood, and died out in that flood. So the people they saw were not descendants of the Nephilim, but were descendants of Noah and his children, seeing that they were the only humans saved. So it looks to me like they exaggerated a little. But never the less, they didn't pull into the equation what Caleb and Joshua did. See, the ten spies saw themselves as grasshoppers and the people as a giants that would squash them. Because they were doing the “us against them” deal.
But they should have been doing the “us and God against them”. Faith in God would have changed their view of themselves. They would have known that He would overcome for them and that they were not just grasshoppers.
So today if you are walking with God, when you look at your life and see gargantuan troubles, remember that God is with you and that He will make you more than a grasshopper. He will make you a giant radioactive grasshopper that doesn’t back down, is bazooka proof and eats tanks. Well you get my point.
Vern
